DNS politics

[kurt]

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/de ... ame-system

"The Domain Name System (DNS) has become such a fundamental part of the Internet over the years, and yet it has also become more political than ever. In our introductory piece, we introduced the main themes for this series, and in this article we explore the specific issues of censorship, domain seizures, thefts, and privacy. Decentralization can address these important issues in a direct way.

Much of what is wrong with the status quo stems from the centralized structure of our DNS. From a political perspective it is a three-tired hierarchy. ICANN is in charge, at the center of it all. On the second level are the registries, like Verisign, who are in charge of top-level domains (TLDs) like .com.

On the bottom tier are registrars, who provide retail services like domain registration to customers. They are proxies who typically present an assortment of TLDs for consumers to register. There are currently around 1000 registrars accredited by ICANN, and many have networks of resellers working with them. Think of registry operators as the wholesalers, and registrars as the retailers.

All these are eliminated, or at least marginalized, with a decentralized solution—there is just no need for them. People and companies are now empowered to register their domain names without going through intermediaries, and without being forced to adhere to the rules set by political bodies like ICANN."

The hacker inside me likes decentralization architecture. It could be argue [sic] that much of the "political problems" we have today derives [sic] from the centralized nature of the DNS with the root. So technology like Namecoins or other decentralized identifier system [intrigues] me.
—James Seng, March 2014 draft from ICANN's Technology Innovation Panel

[mightbemike]

- immune from censorship and seizure
- theft resistant
- removes politics by eliminating ICANN/registry operators/registrars

I think the most important part is the last section. The new ICANN president commisioned this working group to bring a recommendation forth, which they did over the objection of the sole privacy advocate on the group. It suggests adding a new required legal contact to the WHOIS - which is required to have public "street address" and "phone number" fields. Not a problem for corporations, granted, but a huge blow to privacy for individual registrants.

ICANN is going in the wrong direction, eroding the remaining individual registrant's privacy. Namecoin totally gets this right - you publish the contact info you are comfortable disclosing.

A little birdie tells me there's a specific Namecoin one coming soon...

[sudoquai]

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/de ... ame-system

Thanks Mike for opening this discussion.

[phelix]

Sometimes I envision a senate to govern Namecoin. Implementing this would be a piece of cake in Namecoin, but how to decide on the candidates?