BitTorrent Based DNS To Counter US Domain Seizures

[czr114]

I've seen alternate TLDs come and go. They were mostly commercial gimmicks.

This one looks different, based on an new and innovative form of thinking.

http://dot-p2p.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-based-dns-to-counter-us-domain-seizures-101130/

As the saying goes, the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Currently, all root servers are at the whims of political elites, not the people, with two of those root servers being in China.

In addition to the speech issues, a P2P TLD will be great for helping break down the commercial registration and intrusive WHOIS paradigms, opening up easy registrations for those who don't want to deal with the problems/policies of No-IP, outfits like Godaddy, or ICANN's idiotic WHOIS policies.


Please don't go into the politics of the seizures like the other locked threads. That's been discussed and buried per moderation guidelines. This thread is about the new approach to DNS.

[zekopeko]

In addition to the speech issues, a P2P TLD will be great for helping break down the commercial registration and intrusive WHOIS paradigms, opening up easy registrations for those who don't want to deal with the problems/policies of No-IP, outfits like Godaddy, or ICANN's idiotic WHOIS policies.

Elaborate.

[czr114]

Elaborate.
Which part?

[neu5eeCh]

Please don't go into the politics of the seizures like the other locked threads. That's been discussed and buried per moderation guidelines. This thread is about the new approach to DNS.

My last post wasn't about politics but it was closed anyway. So be it.

In keeping with what you've written and what I wrote in the closed thread: I have to wonder whether governments, in general, are going to "crack down" on the Internet in a way that, until now, they haven't. Maybe it's not possible, but if China can reroute a huge chunk of the US web traffic, then serious disruption seems to be probable.

As the government seizes more and more websites, I can't help wondering how many they would really like to seize.

So, the development of P2P TLD is interesting. It might also signify the beginning of a war between governments and "the people". Are there any servers which are not, ultimately, at the whim of political elites?

[czr114]

My last post wasn't about politics but it was closed anyway. So be it.

In keeping with what you've written and what I wrote in the closed thread: I have to wonder whether governments, in general, are going to "crack down" on the Internet in a way that, until now, they haven't. Maybe it's not possible, but if China can reroute a huge chunk of the US web traffic, then serious disruption seems to be probable.

As the government seizes more and more websites, I can't help wondering how many they would really like to seize.

So, the development of P2P TLD is interesting. It might also signify the beginning of a war between governments and "the people". Are there any servers which are not, ultimately, at the whim of political elites?
I see several disturbing trends.

First is the huge divide between hobbyists and casual users and the onerous administrative procedures required to contest actions. It amounts, in effect, to rule by bullying, whether it's a person claiming fair use for text on a blog, a person maintaining their right to hyperlink, or an individual facing legal theft of a domain through the abusive, lawyer-laden trademark system. While it's often possible to preserve one's rights following a long fight, the average person engaged in casual use can't afford the investment of time or money, and can't take the risk of losing. The end result is chilled speech.

Along your second point, here's some food for thought: South Korea has already issued national IDs whose numbers are supposed to be entered for every comment and other user interaction on a website. They've effectively killed privacy in the name of keeping everything "orderly" and regulated.

Some European countries are rolling out PKI in national ID cards. While the subject of national ID is political and beyond the scope of this forum, it's a troubling technological trend, as citizens now must worry about information liberty if everyone has a standardized way to be forced to authenticate. How long before challenge-response from these smartcards is necessary for domain registration, setting up a blog, posting a comment, obtaining hosting, etc.? The regulations are half-worthless because people can easily buy hosting overseas - for now. P2P DNS seems like a far more democratic institution helping us keep information more democratic and resist efforts to unify all of a person's identities under one assigned identity.

P2P DNS would be in the hands of a decentralized, democratic swarm operating on tens of millions of community nodes. If a client can connect to even one node, they have full functionality. A good cryptographic framework ensures tamper-resistance and enforcement of democratic rating systems which, for example, can be used to sanction sites hosting malware or facilitating spam.

[zekopeko]

Which part?

This:


commercial registration and intrusive WHOIS paradigms, opening up easy registrations for those who don't want to deal with the problems/policies of No-IP, outfits like Godaddy, or ICANN's idiotic WHOIS policies.

[czr114]

This:
The current WHOIS policies are flawed in several regards.

They're intrusive of personal privacy. Why should a person wanting to publish a personal blog or have vanity email be required to furnish a full name, address, telephone number, and email address for public viewing?

Many people don't. Those who don't either get charged a nuisance fee by the registrar for nominee contact info, or they put invalid information in WHOIS, which never gets checked unless they're a spammer (who are notorious for using throwaway info anyway).

By analogy, people don't have to publically publish all that info to get a phone number. If there is a legal issue, a court can review due process requirements and issue a subpoena for customer details of that number, just as they could if there was no WHOIS.

WHOIS, as it stands now, is like a forced contact directory. Many people don't want to be contacted/spammed/datamined by strangers; if they did, they'd publish contact info over HTTP, in whatever degree they're comfortable with, and often with safeguards to prevent datamining and harvesting.

DNS is simply supposed to translate a human-friendly string of characters into an IP address. It was a useful abstraction for IPv4, and even more so for IPv6. P2P DNS has the potential to reinvigorate that simple mapping.

[neu5eeCh]

First is the huge divide between hobbyists and casual users and the onerous administrative procedures required to contest actions. It amounts, in effect, to rule by bullying....

A good example of this, possibly, would be "Sita Sings the Blues (http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/)". The film maker issued her movie with a "Copyleft" (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/), in defiance of the onerous administrative procedures which would have been required to reuse material that was, ostensibly, public domain. Some of the issues she described in producing the movie echo your concerns. I wouldn't mind seeing Copyleft being used more frequently by artists - it's an artistic version of the GPL - which mostly, as it's explained, pertains to software. Just as our cultural wealth is threatened by its being concentrated in the hands of a wealthy and powerful few, there are powerful and wealthy interests who would like to concentrate the Internet's wealth in their own hands.



South Korea has already issued national IDs whose numbers are supposed to be entered for every comment and other user interaction on a website. They've effectively killed privacy in the name of keeping everything "orderly" and regulated.

Chilling. Although anonymity can bring out the very worst, I think the benefits of such freedom outweighs the harm.

[Shining Arcanine]

I've seen alternate TLDs come and go. They were mostly commercial gimmicks.

This one looks different, based on an new and innovative form of thinking.

http://dot-p2p.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-based-dns-to-counter-us-domain-seizures-101130/

As the saying goes, the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Currently, all root servers are at the whims of political elites, not the people, with two of those root servers being in China.

In addition to the speech issues, a P2P TLD will be great for helping break down the commercial registration and intrusive WHOIS paradigms, opening up easy registrations for those who don't want to deal with the problems/policies of No-IP, outfits like Godaddy, or ICANN's idiotic WHOIS policies.


Please don't go into the politics of the seizures like the other locked threads. That's been discussed and buried per moderation guidelines. This thread is about the new approach to DNS.

What happens when one system says that one guy owns a website and another system says that someone else owns a website?

[czr114]

What happens when one system says that one guy owns a website and another system says that someone else owns a website?

Actually, that's exactly how things work now. Your ISP's DNS servers (or an attacker who can modify what's on the wire) can claim that anybody owns a website by substituting a given IP address for the one returned from the authoritative nameservers.

This system would function much like DNSSEC in that asymmetric cryptography can be used to vouch for the authenticity of a record. Users need not trust the system from which they receive IP lookups, so long as they trust the public key of the root authority.

It'd be to DNS what apt-p2p or debtorrent are to OS updates. The channel may be insecure, but that doesn't matter, because good cryptographic implementations can ensure data wasn't modified between the source and the destination.

[juancarlospaco]

I surf by IP.

v6 of course