Three-Strikes and you’re DOSd

You may have heard about the Three-Strikes law proposal that has been suggested as a way to end copyright infringement. If you think about it for a minute, it could be the ultimate way to create a DOS attack. Web pages could abuse this system to ban you from the internet by using iframes or background images to download content on your behalf. Simply reading your RSS reader could result in your connection not working any more.

Suddenly minor flaws in web sites could be abused to take down entire web sites for long periods by a remote connection from the server. In order for this law to work it would have to be automated and automation leads to abuse, not being able to identify the user that was directly responsible makes this law a terrible idea.

It’s clear to me that whoever thought of this law has no idea how the internet works or how it can be abused. If this law is ever passed it will be bad news for everyone on the internet, from a censorship and security perspective.