SOPA Act

huh? Hate to break it to you, but ISPs have always been required to do that. There is a 7 year retention period on absolutely everything you do. That's why people using proxies are essentially just getting a placebo effect; the root still knows exactly what you are doing, and the feds can look up that information at any time with probable cause.

Whoa. Everything? That'd be prohibitively taxing on server resources. I've read they have to retain records of financial transactions for 7 years, is that what you were thinking of?

Proxies conceal the traffic between you and your end contact, not your ISP. However, if the proxy uses encryption, your ISP would have to decrypt the traffic to know what you were doing beyond going to that proxy.

The reason why that clause in the bill is a problem for us Interweb denizens is that ISPs wont be able to plead ignorance when your IP gets slapped with a file sharing suit. They'll say this IP at this time downloaded in this torrent and here's the court ordered proof this IP belonged to this person at the time. They'll be able to prove damages instead of terrorize people into settling.

Additionally, this could effectively outlaw unsecured networks, because the network provider couldn't identify who uses it, as would be required by this law

Including our bank account and credit card numbers? If it's the feds, they could dig up this information all too easily, why let ISPs store it?

The alternative was to trust the banks that all online financial transactions are legitimate... there needs to be some record of who is sending money digitally, just as there is on paper.