1/18's Internet blackout gets admiration in China

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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-c ... 1035.story

Question to Alex: If PIPA or SOPA do pass, is there a possibility Wrong Planet
could end up on an Internet blacklist? I sure hope both bills DON'T get voted on,
and what will a blacked out Wrong Planet look like?

I'm not alex obviously, but, yes it could be easily blacklisted by just one post that's infringing. Also, you wouldn't be able to even access WP. It'd be blocked on a DNS level should it be blacklisted. You'd have to know its IP address to access it.

I'm not a computer geek obviously, but what does IP stand for?

Internet Protocol Address is the full name of it. It's basically 4 numbers like this for example: 100.100.100.100
Those numbers are the real addresses of everything on the internet.

DNS basically acts like a "phonebook" that associate domain names to those numbers.

So by DNS blocking is like whiting out the numbers to a location's name. So when the DNS looks up "Wrongplanet.net" for instance, it wouldn't find any IP address to route to and thus hits a dead end.

But if you already know the number (IP address), that's no problem.

and IP addresses are easy enough to find anyways.

It also gets admiration from one lonely US Senator: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-ron-w ... 14553.html

Regarding "IP": it can also stand for Intellectual Property. Just in case you come across this abbreviation in a different context (such as PIPA, the Protect IP Act).

Allow me to rephrase myself...

Suggestion to Alex: Tommorow or Sunday, Wrong Planet, and all other websites just like Wrong Planet {Facebook & Twitter included}, blackout for the day the same way Google did.

If something was blocked at DNS level, it'd be easy to get into the site even if you didn't know the IP - just change your DNS servers to ones not based in the US. They can't get every single DNS provider.