Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think if SOPA passes, Mozilla will remove extensions such as this. I hope this extension is a deterrent to SOPA passing at all.
finnw, the code is actually pretty trivial and does not make use of very special functionality. Further, if SOPA does pass, many even more innovative programs will come out of the woodwork, at the OS layer. I think forcing a patch like that would be a hard sell.
I run dnsmasq on my machines, for example, and its primary purpose is to alter DNS resolution - my nameserver is set to localhost, and my dnsmasq configuration sets which DNS servers to use for what top level domains etc., and routes *.local to a flat file on my home server, for example.
Dnsmasq itself isn't suited to avoid SOPA, but it's a good proof of concept for a small dns server that mediates the lookups based on rules, but defer to "regular DNS" for everything else. There are tons of simple DNS servers out there that can easily be modified to do detect likely SOPA blocked domains and use whatever mechanisms to resolve it through non-US servers (even if your upstream ISP gets forced to filter DNS).
Worst case? Distribute zone files of blocked domains as torrents automatically, or hide lookups in otherwise innocuous looking traffic.
If they IP block the sites, the same mechanism can be used to serve up lists of addresses of proxies instead of the real sites.
The system just needs to be faster than the SOPA proponents manage to send their extortion letters to ISPs.
The beauty is that if/when mechanisms like this start becoming commonplace, the cat is out of the bag - they'll never regain control.