One of the most serious problems with it that the author omitted is that the DNS-related powers (the ability to hijack the domain and send it to a US government-controlled server) is seriously problematic for our privileged position online. The US is the de facto, not de jure, maintainer of several key pieces of the global DNS because hitherto, the US was trusted to be the most neutral player. The first amendment means the federal government cannot impose any cultural standards on the rest of the world and so far, we hadn’t altered the DNS for our economic advantage (or protection).
SOPA changes that. It makes us unreliable to the rest of the world because DNS changes we make will propagate to the rest of the world under the current system. SOPA did not just require ISPs to block infringing domains, but attacks the very DNS registration itself which means that the block will actually become a new DNS entry that the rest of the world will receive. Effectively, this means that barring outside intervention, what we censor in the US becomes censored in Europe, China, etc.
There has been agitation for UN control over this system for a while. That idiot R-Hollywood Smith just made an excellent case for the rest of the world to turn over control from ICANN to the UN’s ITU.
