Name Squatting once again...

somename
Posts: 80
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 3:12 pm
os: windows

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by somename »

pianist wrote:
I won't contact him.
Just go to courte with documents needed and get my domain. For example, if I own a trademark.

So I think there should be something like courte in NMC or the project will fail.
Why would any particular court has jurisdiction over some particular public ledger?

What if he owns the same trademark in a different country (say, China)?

Or what if your court decides in your favor, but the owner is unknown, so nothing can be done?

biolizard89
Posts: 2001
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:25 am
os: linux

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by biolizard89 »

ASZ wrote:I'd like to thank you all for participating in a (to me) very interesting discussion.

I would like to make a few comments:

* Many of you keep mentioning OneName when speaking about squatting. From the wording of some posts it seems, as if OneName were the largest squatter. What makes you think this way? What if I could tell you that this assumption does not hold (due to the pseudoanonimity of Namecoin one can, however, never be a 100% sure)?
OneName representatives were bragging a few months ago that u/ was the namespace with the most registrations (more than d/ or id/). Given that almost all u/ names are registered by OneName (also by their own admission), it logically follows that OneName is one of the largest squatters, if not the largest, at least as of when they made that statement. Do you happen to have evidence to the contrary?
ASZ wrote:* Has anyone had any thoughts on the actual cause of increasing name squatting activities? Apart from the factors emerging from the focal idea of Namecoin, Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies, i.e. the total absence of control, the economical factor IMHO plays a significant role in the mentioned development.

Some of you have argued that the renewal fees for Namecoin names are far too low. However, this does not pertain for the NMC costs for registering/updating names (0.01 reg. fees, 0.01 transaction fees), since we still measure the worth of Namecoin names in USD or the like. I dare to argue that raising renewal fees would only prove to be successful, if as a result the USD price for name operations were to rise.
The worth of NMC ( ~0.379 USD as of 04.09.2015 01:30) also affects name squatting in a further way, which unfortunately may be hard to prove and thus shall not mention here just yet.
You are correct; it's the USD price of a name that influences squatting behavior. This makes solutions more difficult, because an external data source (the NMC/USD exchange rate) must be taken into account, and blockchains suck at using external data sources. BitShares tries to solve this by using a multisig trusted party to determine exchange rates. For reasons that I hope are obvious, I am not a fan of that approach. Miner votes, or PoS votes, might be a better solution, although the exact attacks enabled by such methods are not very well understood.
ASZ wrote:* As of this writing and to the best of my knowledge, there exists no incentive for name squatters to refrain from bulk-registering Namecoin names.
Since name squatting has yet to be recognized as a major problem, it does not seem to affect the price directly (at least I found no actual proof, which would allow such assertions). It may, of course, cause 3rd party enterprises to step back from Namecoin as potential naming system, though I think we can all agree that the main cause lies with the current usability issues (please do not mistake this for criticism).
I agree with this. I can attest to the incentives favoring squatting, because I happen to be holding about 100 names for various friends and other organizations that I support. I'm an ethical squatter, in the sense that I will happily hand them over for free when/if the rightful owner decides they want to use Namecoin, but the fact that the system is dependent on squatters being ethical, is not a good thing. But yes, I also totally agree that usability is a bigger issue than squatting, and is therefore a somewhat higher priority to deal with. However, there's nothing wrong with parallel efforts. If someone wants to propose improvements to the fee structure, I would happily engage them and provide feedback. (It just won't be the main thing I spend lots of time on yet.)
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
NameID: id/jeremy
DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

Donations: BTC 1EcUWRa9H6ZuWPkF3BDj6k4k1vCgv41ab8 ; NMC NFqbaS7ReiQ9MBmsowwcDSmp4iDznjmEh5

biolizard89
Posts: 2001
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:25 am
os: linux

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by biolizard89 »

pianist wrote:
somename wrote:
pianist wrote:
ASZ wrote:Have you encountered problems with squatters, which made you think twice about using Namecoin again?
Yes, squatter registered domain I would like to take, put BitMessage address, but do not reply for a long time! So, nobody could help me with that.
That is a funny statement.

He doesn't have to reply.
And how is that a problem of Namecoin? How do you contact the owner of a Whois-protected .com domain and if you succeed, according to what law or logic is he obliged to respond?
I won't contact him.
Just go to courte with documents needed and get my domain. For example, if I own a trademark.

So I think there should be something like courte in NMC or the project will fail.
There is no way to enforce a centralized trademark database in a decentralized system. We can try to use economic incentives to discourage squatting, but something like court orders are a no-go.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
NameID: id/jeremy
DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

Donations: BTC 1EcUWRa9H6ZuWPkF3BDj6k4k1vCgv41ab8 ; NMC NFqbaS7ReiQ9MBmsowwcDSmp4iDznjmEh5

biolizard89
Posts: 2001
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:25 am
os: linux

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by biolizard89 »

phelix wrote:
somename wrote:[...]
Why are possible coercive solutions discussed before the most obvious one has been tried (which is to make it possible to easily buy and sell Namecoin assets)?
Well, we are trying to make things easier but it is somewhat difficult. There is nametrade/ANTPY that can be used to make secure "atomic" trades. What is missing is a standardized means of communication. It might be possible to send buy offers via throwaway names or sell offers by adding a link to an unfinished nametrade/ANTPY script.
For the record, I emailed Dionysis from OpenBazaar about this, a while ago. He never answered, and I didn't have time to pursue it any further.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
NameID: id/jeremy
DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

Donations: BTC 1EcUWRa9H6ZuWPkF3BDj6k4k1vCgv41ab8 ; NMC NFqbaS7ReiQ9MBmsowwcDSmp4iDznjmEh5

pianist
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 9:20 am
os: linux

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by pianist »

biolizard89 wrote: There is no way to enforce a centralized trademark database in a decentralized system. We can try to use economic incentives to discourage squatting, but something like court orders are a no-go.
Hard fork with voting rules. ;)

Squaters will continue to mine old branch, it' ok :)

biolizard89
Posts: 2001
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:25 am
os: linux

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by biolizard89 »

pianist wrote:
biolizard89 wrote: There is no way to enforce a centralized trademark database in a decentralized system. We can try to use economic incentives to discourage squatting, but something like court orders are a no-go.
Hard fork with voting rules. ;)

Squaters will continue to mine old branch, it' ok :)
Well, yes, we could hardfork with economic incentives that might include miner or PoS voting on name price. But this would have to be carefully constructed so that censorship attacks are not feasible. Letting the votes apply to individual names would be usable for censorship, and therefore not workable in Namecoin.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
NameID: id/jeremy
DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

Donations: BTC 1EcUWRa9H6ZuWPkF3BDj6k4k1vCgv41ab8 ; NMC NFqbaS7ReiQ9MBmsowwcDSmp4iDznjmEh5

pianist
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 9:20 am
os: linux

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by pianist »

biolizard89 wrote:Well, yes, we could hardfork with economic incentives that might include miner or PoS voting on name price. But this would have to be carefully constructed so that censorship attacks are not feasible. Letting the votes apply to individual names would be usable for censorship, and therefore not workable in Namecoin.
I think my algorithm is censorship resistant.

1. Everyone who wants to own a domain/name starts voting for example paying 1008 NMC fee
2. Miners get this transaction and decide whether to vote or not
3. Network gives 1 month for miners to investigate everything and decide how to vote
4. 1 week of voting, 1008 blocks +1 NMC for each vote
5. Miner can vote +1 or 0 in each block and get +1 NMC. He can ignore voting and get nothing, next miner will get +2 or even +3.

For example Google decides to request d/google and starts voting with simple URL like google.com/namecoin_domain_request Miners check this URL, read and helps Google.

biolizard89
Posts: 2001
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:25 am
os: linux

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by biolizard89 »

pianist wrote:
biolizard89 wrote:Well, yes, we could hardfork with economic incentives that might include miner or PoS voting on name price. But this would have to be carefully constructed so that censorship attacks are not feasible. Letting the votes apply to individual names would be usable for censorship, and therefore not workable in Namecoin.
I think my algorithm is censorship resistant.

1. Everyone who wants to own a domain/name starts voting for example paying 1008 NMC fee
2. Miners get this transaction and decide whether to vote or not
3. Network gives 1 month for miners to investigate everything and decide how to vote
4. 1 week of voting, 1008 blocks +1 NMC for each vote
5. Miner can vote +1 or 0 in each block and get +1 NMC. He can ignore voting and get nothing, next miner will get +2 or even +3.

For example Google decides to request d/google and starts voting with simple URL like google.com/namecoin_domain_request Miners check this URL, read and helps Google.
I'm not sure I understand your proposal. Can you define it a bit more precisely?
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
NameID: id/jeremy
DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

Donations: BTC 1EcUWRa9H6ZuWPkF3BDj6k4k1vCgv41ab8 ; NMC NFqbaS7ReiQ9MBmsowwcDSmp4iDznjmEh5

somename
Posts: 80
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 3:12 pm
os: windows

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by somename »

pianist wrote: I think my algorithm is censorship resistant.
The famous last words.
pianist wrote: 3. Network gives 1 month for miners to investigate everything and decide how to vote
To investigate what? They're just freaking miners for Pete's sake!

This reminds me of those "works councils" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council) in socialist countries whose representatives decided on important issues (as if they had a clue).
pianist wrote: 5. Miner can vote +1 or 0 in each block and get +1 NMC. He can ignore voting and get nothing, next miner will get +2 or even +3.
Perfect! At least it's clear that it's even not important what the truth is - as long as miners all agree to always vote 1 (or 0, it doesn't matter), they always get to distribute the spoils among them.

pianist
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 9:20 am
os: linux

Re: Name Squatting once again...

Post by pianist »

somename wrote: Perfect! At least it's clear that it's even not important what the truth is - as long as miners all agree to always vote 1 (or 0, it doesn't matter), they always get to distribute the spoils among them.
He will get the revenue in any case.

But it's true that they can vote automatically without even reading any documents. :(

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