What is the stuff that needs building for SOPA to be effective? All the rights holders need to know is the name of the domain they want seized, and it gets removed from DNS. Pretty simple and sadly effective.
Edit: For people that think this is difficult - ICE is already doing it quite easily. They contact the company that controls the root domain. For .com, it is VeriSign.
DNS could be circumvented or supplanted. The real horror scenario is language mandating dropping addresses from routing tables making it into a treaty.
So they know the name that they want removed. Who do they tell? How do they tell them? Do they call on the phone? Do they enter it in a web form? Who wrote that web app? Who maintains the server that runs it? Who edits the DNS record to remove the name or writes the software that does so?
There are a number of intermediate steps between "knowing the name" and "the DNS record gets removed". DNS servers are not yet controlled telepathically, to my knowledge.
Have you seen all the ICE FBI domain seizures over the last year? That part is already done and has been running along taking hundreds of domains in its first year of operations
Yes, they seized 150 domains. I would not be surprised if they printed the list out and handed it over, and someone had a very boring afternoon of banning them. What happens when a counterfeiter registers 1000 domains? or 10000? or 100000? That's all besides the point. The point is that somebody who knows this is a bad idea had to be involved in making it happen. I want that person to stand up and refuse to do it. There are thousands of engineers working at the companies that are advocating this law. How long would Sony stay in business if its engineering staff up and quit?
Edit: For people that think this is difficult - ICE is already doing it quite easily. They contact the company that controls the root domain. For .com, it is VeriSign.