White House opposes SOPA in its current form, Razer and many others also voice their opinion

In the ongoing battle of geeks against government, Razer, developer of some very nice hardware, has shown their disapproval of the bill, and the White House itself has shown opposition.

The official Facebook page of Razer has stated under a picture showing their team with “Fuck SOPA” written in letters three feet high and in bright green to highlight the news of SOPA to those who have, for some reason, not heard of it. They detailed the basic idea of the bill as something that could hurt the internet, calling it “ham-fisted” and hurting both community and developer alike.

Razer is among a select few individuals who plan to black out their sites in protest of SOPA, which includes a large amount of Reddit which gets several million hits on a daily basis. Razer voiced their intention to shut down their site for one day on January 18th as an awareness of what SOPA could do to Americans on the internet.

In addition to this, the White House made a formal response to a pair of sizable petitions asking for the bill to be struck down and burned to ashes. Their response said that the Administration acknowledged that online piracy is a major problem across the internet, but at the same time that it reduces freedom of expression and undermines the internet as a whole. The response goes on to say that any attempts to solve the problem of online piracy must not allow censorship of lawful activity, and not inhibit innovation by businesses. They also showed a degree of internet savvy by saying that laws should not tamper with the internet by manipulating the Domain Name System, which is among the few security aspects the internet naturally has.

Even though a website can be accessed without a domain name by putting in the hosting IP of it, only one person can own a specific domain at any time, meaning any attempts to mimic Steam, GameFAQS, or 4chan will fall to bits at the domain name. Anyone who is even slightly smart about internet security knows to spot typos and subdomain trickery. Touching the DNS can cause a major disaster if a security leak happens.

Others who have publicly stated that they oppose SOPA include Craigslist, Google, 4chan, Twitter, Facebook, and several others. Each of them having millions of users and countless views. Sites that (to my knowledge) plan to have a blackout are Reddit, Razer, Destructoid, Cryptocat and the ones who have shown interest in having their own blackouts include Explosm, Wikipedia, and Mojang.

Here is a list  of companies who plan to have a blackout on Jan18th.

Considering the unpopularity of this bill, I don’t want to see what happens if it passes. Remember, it’s not that they support piracy, but that this can be exploited. As any gamer knows, especially MMO gamers, if something can be exploited, it will be exploited.