The Pirate Bay Co-Founder Starting P2P-DNS

An anonymous reader writes "The Pirate Bay Co-Founder, Peter Sunde, has started a new project which will provide a decentralized p2p based DNS system. This is a direct result of the increasing control which the US government has over ICANN. The project is called P2P-DNS and according to the project's wiki, this is how the project is described: 'P2P-DNS is a community project that will free internet users from imperial control of DNS by ICANN. In order to prevent unjust prosecution or denial of service, P2P-DNS will operate as a distributed and less centralized service hosted by the users of DNS. Temporary substitutes, (as Alpha and Beta developments), are being made ready for deployment. A network with no centralized points of failure, (per the original design of the internet), remains our goal. P2P-DNS is developing rapidly.'"

Comments

Been Tried...

[nweaver]

This has been tried, several times. With the same problems popping up again and again.

Such as "The DNS is a hierarchical namespace, P2P type controls work only for flat namespaces. Yet generally people like hierarchical namespaces."

and "Without a good notion of cryptographic trust, you're doomed in a P2P setting. And if you think a PKI is hard to get right...".

Re:Been Tried...

[vlm]

>Such as "The DNS is a hierarchical namespace, P2P type controls work only for flat namespaces. Yet generally people like hierarchical namespaces."

Its the other way around, people generally hate hierarchical namespaces.

Outside the US, the whole "co.uk" type thing is tolerated, not enjoyed. Inside the US, the unwashed masses are completely mystified by *.state.us addresses to the point that they are mostly unused, with domains like "cityname.com" or "schoolname.org" as the modern preferred choice. Also "AOL keywords" have been replaced by "www.facebook.com/whatever". You see, each step in the edu/gov/us hierarchy contains a nearly impenetrable bureaucracy, but registering a ".com" at godaddy just takes 5 minutes and a credit card...

Re:Been Tried...

[werfu]

Then go flat namespace. Why do we really need hierarchical namespace? I mean, people don't bother if its .com, .net or .org. Its a convention. Anyway, most people now protect their domain name by buying other domain suffix. Or like my mom that has google as her start page, and enter the url she wants to go directly into the google search textbox then press search. IMO domain suffix are overrated and provide more bloat to the net than it does good. Just look at the mess the .co domain is doing. A lot of domain scammers have already taken well known domains to make moneys from people entering things like hotmail.co. If there was no domain suffix, you would simply enter gmail and then get to gmail. Who cares about country anyway on the net.

Re:Been Tried...

[TheRaven64]

I read a paper a few years ago, which showed a strong correlation between programmers and hierarchical thinkers. This isn't entirely surprising - most programming languages arrange code in hierarchical structures (modules, classes, subroutines, nested scopes, and so on), so to be able to use one you need to be good at thinking in terms of hierarchy. Programmers therefore tend to assume that thinking in terms of hierarchies is normal for humans. In fact, the study showed that it's only easy for something like 5-10% of the population.

iTunes is a good example. It arranges music in a flat layout and lets you filter it based on various properties. A typical programmer reaction is 'why would I want that? My music is arranged in an artist/album/track directory structure already'. It's one of the main reasons why programmers tend to be terrible at designing user interfaces for non-programmers.

WINS - Yes, WINS - Windows Internet Naming System

[Joe U]

Most major systems have a WINS client, I doubt nearly anyone is using it at home.

Write a resolver that mimics WINS to the client and then behind the scenes use a modern P2P encrypted network.

No client work is needed, no DNS passthru is needed and no DNS baggage is needed.

Now you have a foothold until you spend the time to write a native client.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Barefoot Monkey]

"The Pirate Bay Co-Founder ... and alleged rapist ... has started a new project which will provide a decentralized p2p based ..."

That should be a new meme. Simply put "an alleged rapist" after every reference to anyone at all, until that particular vector of character assassination becomes meaningless.

It's important to ensure that your subject actually is an alleged rapist though - otherwise you're just being inaccurate and libellous. The trick is to tell someone (a friend sitting next to you at the time will do) that the subject is a rapist, thus permanently transforming the subject into an alleged rapist even if the person you told is fully aware of the meme. It's safe to then clarify that the subject is not actually a rapist, since there is no such thing as "a formerly-alleged rapist".

This idea is inspired by Godwin (an alleged rapist) and his well-known counter-meme, Godwin's Law.

What SPAM doesn't kill, gets stronger....

[malakai]

You are looking at this from the wrong point of view. It is not that SPAM kills good products. Instead SPAM kills products that were poorly designed and/or implemented.

Let's say SPAM didn't exist. Let us say that you create some new Killer App 4.0. You release it. Someone doesn't like you. They don't like your company, or they don't like someone using your product. They don't want to make a buck, they just want to grief. At this point, whatever flaws would have been exploited by a SPAM'er, is going to be exploited by this griefer.

SPAM IS GOOD. Our infrastructure and our original set of RFC's are BAD. They were built in too clean of a room. They worked initially in the original sterile environment, but they are failing to cope with the current non-sterile environment. All internet products need a much more healthy immune systems. And SPAM, if it's good for nothing, is good for building an Immune systems ( have you tasted it )?