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Tell HN: We need p2p DNS

4 points by elb0w ↗ HN
Looking at the trends going on in government it would appear that some of them have an idea of what DNS does. It feels as though without being technical people they are improperly using DNS as a means to regulate the internet. We must stop things like the PROTECT IP ACT and all the Domain seizures going on. if we open the flood gates now we will never regain control.

I have thought of how this could possibly implemented. Recalling some people working on a p2p DNS I couldnt help but think how it would be too complicated for non techies to use.

To me the only logical way to implement this would be to have it as part of a browser. Firefox obviously comes to mind.

I see no reasons why Domain registrations could not follow the same model.

Are my feelings wrong on this? Do you all not feel the same way? The internet is really our last true free space of innovation and freedom.

While groups like Anon and LulzSec may seem to be pushing on the verge of bad guys at times. I feel that in their sometimes convoluted methods is a message that someone has to do something.

I think its up to us all to take as much control away from third parties and call for a Declaration of the Internet.

6 comments

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sneak
DNS is already fully decentralized. Just register a domain somewhere the US can't readily fuck with. They're not going to get the IANA to pull an entire sovereign nation's gTLD delegation because one of their registrants is doing something they don't like.

PS: Namecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, as pointed out by vasilov already. It's completely stupid and ill-conceived, which is irrelevant because it'll vanish from disuse in short order just like AlterNIC.

PPS: Making hostname lookups "part of the browser" is the same kind of "the internet == the web" thinking that got us abominations like WebSockets. Please... just don't.

sneak
Oh, one other thing: Tor hidden service .onion hostnames already operate outside of DNS (they are encoded keys). Last I checked, Tor is p2p, so this is is IMHO a solved problem.
nextparadigms
"I think its up to us all to take as much control away from third parties and call for a Declaration of the Internet"

Were you thinking of something like this:

http://w2.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

So far, I think Namecoin is the only P2P DNS solution that can work. I think the guy working on Phantom protocol (code.google.com/p/phantom) was planning on using something like DHT for a decentralized DNS.

Right now there are only 2 choices if you want to keep a free Internet:

1) Try to stop them from passing bills like Protect IP, by making a lot of noise online and offline, and trying to gather as much support for this.

2) Let them do what they want, and eventually we all move to something like Phantom.

Obviously this 2nd solution doesn't seem ideal, at least in the short term. Long term, it might be better to have a completely anonymized and decentralized Internet. But it seems like such a hard task to get to the point where many people would use it. It took a decade for Bittorrent to be used by many people, even though I wouldn't say it's exactly mainstream right now.

So the easier way to keep our Internet freedoms would be to speak out against such measures and do whatever it takes to stop them (even revolutions). And it seems that Anonymous is already moving to do just that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_9T1SPJXRI

aeden
I agree that we must stop legislation that aims to control our freedom and our will. I don't necessarily agree that a P2P DNS system is either necessary nor will it be successfully adopted by the masses, who are exactly the people that need protection from oppression the most.

Rather than treating the symptom (DNS) treat the disease (governments that do not exist for the good of their people).

trbecker
Governments not interested in the wills of the people is old news. Most of them are just a proxy to turn the interest of few into regulation.