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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.'"
But there is so, so much potential for spammers to kill it before it gets out of the gate good. Spammers so far have killed quite a large number of things that used to be cool on the internet and they're not going to stop until they're reigned in or nobody uses anything electronic anymore because of them.
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When you violate US copyright law, the feds really just kinda laugh and say "ok, sure, whatever."
When you try and prevent the US government from taking over something they've set their sights on dominating, they're a whole other kind of aggressive beast.
watch your back dude...
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...".
Test your net with Netalyzr
hosts files.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is not the first time that an alternative Domain Name System has been proposed. Starting with AlterNIC in 1997, alternative DNS has had a controversial history. Many have ceased to function now because of the lack of adoption from users. However, coming right after the controversial seizure of 80 domains by the US government, P2P-DNS might just get enough support to make it a success.
My personal problem with the seizure of 80 domains really isn't that big of a deal. It sucks and it's probably a sign of the abuse of power from the DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But in the end, it was widely announced and advertised. It wasn't done under the cover of secrecy and they at least gave reasons as to why they were seized. For me, this isn't a reason to change the DNS root server that I use. Especially facing slower resolve times and security issues like DNS poisoning.
... yet. If we see the US government doing what China's doing and not announcing who's being seized and why, then you will see me jump on board this.
I can tell you I'm not interested in that trade off
My close friend used borntrade.net which was a knockoff jersey site from a factory in China. Their crime? Avoiding tariffs and not paying tribute to the NHL/MLB/NFL/NBA gods. He might want to use your DNS but I would assume it would only be to conduct business through borntrade.net and not to actually use it on a daily basis. Disclaimer: I think I've seen borntrade bots spamming the Slashdot forums before but now that it's just a DHS/DoJ logo splash screen, you can rest assured I'm not some guy trying to send you there by way of a fake comment.
I would guess that despite the domains being seized, you're going to see the general public not care that much and again the project will fail from lack of adoption. Clandestine government working against the people? Yeah, a few more people are going to hop on board and put up with the speed and security issues. But could someone outline how the whole public would get on board with this? I mean, assuming it's as simple as a browser plugin you can't even get people to install those when the benefits are obvious.
My work here is dung.
...see this being mysteriously stopped by unknown forces.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
1: how could you stop malware developers flooding the network and pointing every request to an exploit filled page?
2: would this be a router's worst nightmare?
A completely decentralized internet would be nothing less than the holy grail of communications. So let's try to support those who strive for this noble goal. A centralized network, no matter how "democratic", is ultimately founded on political power, and I certainly don't have to explain why political power can't be trusted.
It doesn't really seem like you even really need a domain name these days. I don't even notice the name of a lot of sites I find through google. These days they're really just a symptom of the corporate takeover of the Internet, but the standards they rely on are just a bunch of documents from people suggesting that something might be a good idea. Now that the lines have been drawn and ICANN is showing its colors (again) it's time for people to start having some other good ideas. If most people are happy with corporations turning the Internet into a giant cable TV station with tolls for everything, that's fine, but if you don't like that situation you can do something else. People "in the know" can be as much or as little a part of the mainstream Internet as they want to.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
why such a thing didnt come into being MUCH earlier. i mean, up till this time, almost entire control of internet in regard to this, has been in the hands of a single country .... isnt it ridiculous ?
Read radical news here
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.
Plz stop saying I'm the guy behind the new DNS-system. I'm just one of lots of people with interest in it. Everyone does their part!
https://twitter.com/#!/brokep/status/9684729515220992
Before embarking in this project, shouldn't he finish his replacement for BitTorrent he announced a few years back?
I'm sure the DNS project will be as successful as that one.
Lol... give us what we want for free and you'll be amazed at what cash you won't make.
Do you really blame them for trying to keep a hold on their old business models?
The real problem here is the government spoon feeding them hope by allowing the government to be these companies enforcers. If the government didn't intervene, we'd all be off in a much better / customer friendly world right now.
Accused of rape in a friendly foreign country, more likely.
He's Swedish. He doesn't need to travel anywhere to be accused of rape.
Instead, change your pricing structure
You mean, away from the pricing structure which pirates previously said was required? You mean, away from extremely reasonable prices (typically less than $1.00 per song)? There is absolutely nothing wrong with the pricing structure now.
Such statements are red herrings, making imaginary excuses to justify an illegal act.
Now if you want to complain about contractual obligations in the music world, you might have a point, but piracy isn't really related to that in the least. Attempting to make such a connection, is again, that same red herring. Besides, there are lots of existing ways to fix the system without taking from those who have worked hard on their copyrighted product.
Only in a pirate's mind is depriving someone of their income equivalent to helping them.
If spammers are such a problem, then we just need a distributed final solution to the spammer question. I recommend the new German microwave ovens; they seat five thousand.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Karl Denninger, Chicago's most despised internet citizen, now Tea Party wacko dispensing Capital Market advice/doom in Florida, once tried to take ICANN on in 1997 and create eDNS, an alternate DNS with new root servers. Mostly under his direction. He failed. Funny, he doesn't mention that in his bio when he appears as the resident doomsayer on one of the financial networks on tv these days.
Nevertheless, it's a good history lesson in taking ICANN head on. Peter Sunde has something truly subversive, the people taking back the name server space. Let's see if Karl can get on board with this, he's usually preaching that the people need to take pitchforks and torches and march in the street.
Even as a hybrid node, WINS is limited to 15 characters (last bit for browser announce) so we'd run out of address space quick. Plus if memory serves (it's been a while), routers will not pass NBT traffic without implicit configuration.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Hosts files are ignored if you are on a proxy.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Two things. First - WINS is, as it's name implies - Windows Only. Many servers in the back room are not Windows. Secondly most "major systems" whatever that means don't even run WINS anymore.
Yet Tor supports DNS out of the box with just a quick option in torrc:
DNSPort 51
Set your DNS-host on all interfaces to localhost, removing everything else, and off you go.. Anonymous DNS.
Yes, it's slow, it often fails and the system can be tricked to produce false IPs, although there are some simple measurements against it. However, if you want anonymity from dedicated adversaries, it's crucial to know how to properly hide DNS lookups. If anonymity is important to you, the suckiness will matter less to you.
For most of us, it's too insecure and overkill, but for some, it's a viable option since the alternatives can mean torture and death.
I'm sure it is possible to improve on this considerably. You will never reach 100% security, but it can become tolerable for private usage.
The greatest accomplishments were never easy.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the pricing structure now.
A pricing structure that typically (in the UK anyhow) charges about 10-20% more** for lossy digital album downloads than it does for lossless physical CDs (with free delivery) has certainly got something seriously wrong with it.
**My experience, comparing various back catalogue albums, Amazon CD vs. iTunes prices.
Obviously, writing a new resolver isn't easy, and using DNS is easy, but also easily intercepted by the ISP.
I was just reminded that WINS may be limited to 15 characters, which pretty much rules it out anyway.
Oh well, that's what brainstorming is for. The answer to this is going to be outside of DNS as we know it today.
The Torrentfreak article says:
Have to show? Have to show to whom? It sounds like they already have a centralized authority.
If you are so concerned about "preventing scammers from taking over brands" then you're going to have some mechanism for dealing with scammers. And if that mechanism exists, then governments probably can use it to deal with you.
And also, frankly, the narrow focus on one TLD, "p2p" hints that these guys aren't thinking very big.
I think creating a new sabotage/coercion resistant DNS is a worthy goal. Remember that COICA and the recent seizures are just another straw on the camel's back, in a long history of governments interfering with DNS, people disagreeing with ICANN policies, and whatnot. The need isn't going away until it gets solved. But these particular guys have already taken at least 1 step in the wrong direction. That one line about registration shows that protecting freedom of expression isn't their top priority, but if it's not the top priority, then the system won't solve the problem people have with ICANN's DNS.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Or better yet, WTF are host files? Non-techs can sort of understand ABP, as it is an add-on that stops bad or all ads. Host files, no way an average computer user would understand them or utilize them.
The words of the day are:
Mimic, Resolver, and Client.
Either way, this won't work due to other limitations.
I love how free-marketers want the government to stay out of their business when it comes to regulation, but demand the government protect their income.
I say the government should stay out of it altogether.
Let the content producers use their best technological means to protect their content and let the pirates do their best to crack it.
If the content providers can't come up with a way to protect it that the pirates can't crack then they don't deserve the revenue lost. If the content providers DO come up with a way to protect it and it's so burdensome to the consumer that they choose not to purchase it, they don't deserve the revenue lost.
If I leave a stack of cash sitting out beside the road in front of my house, should I expect the police to guard it against theft? Shouldn't I bear some responsibility for keeping it safe instead of burdening the taxpayers with the cost of protecting it?
I just don't think it's right to sacrifice freedom for the sake of greedy corporate regimes that don't give a damn about the artist, developers or writers that produce the content and are only concerned with boosting their bottom line.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
I just want to say that I don't know what Peter Sunde looks like and I probably have never met him since I don't live on the same continent, but he totally raped me. This undermines the credibility of his project, because rapists are known for their incompetence at managing software projects.
A pricing structure that typically (in the UK anyhow) charges about 10-20% more** for lossy digital album downloads than it does for lossless physical CDs (with free delivery) has certainly got something seriously wrong with it.
Which absolutely means you are anti-capitalism. Period. End of discussion. Since you likely receive a paycheck because of capitalism, you're a hypocrite. If you make anything above minimum wage, I'll happily accept the difference so as to rid you of your hypocrisy.
The market asks what consumers will tolerate. Pirates are well on record that something like $1 per song is very tolerable.
Disagreement is not justification for stealing. You want too much for that car, so I'll just take it. That's a metaphor! Obviously a car is not digital media but the concept is exactly the same. Its not like you must have that specific car. Likewise, its not like you must have music and movies.
Time and time again, pirates dance around the fact that what they are really saying is they hate capitalism. Just come out and say you're a socialist; and yet provide nothing to a socialist community. Which more or less means your a parasite on society and a hypocrite.
To date, I've never met a pirate who truly understood the implications of their position. As such, I've never met a pirate who wasn't a hypocrite.
I love how free-marketers want the government to stay out of their business when it comes to regulation, but demand the government protect their income.
You have no clue what you're saying. Government exists to regulate markets. There has been and never will be unregulated capitalism. You're position is basically saying, we shouldn't have police and if others wish to take your property, they should be allowed to do so - assuming they can get past you. Basically your argument is garbage.
I just don't think it's right to sacrifice freedom for the sake of greedy corporate regimes
This is yet more stupidity put forth by ignorant pirates who have no idea what they are talking about. Copyrights laws protect TONS of people. TONS of small and medium sized business DIRECTLY benefit from copyright protections. Copyright laws provide massive jobs and create massive wealth all over the world. A good chunk of the money has absolutely nothing to do with "greedy corporate regimes."
Basically you're arguing that despite you have no idea what you're talking about, capitalism is bad and that you are a socialist. If you accept a paycheck, despite your ignorant ranting, are a hypocrite.
> Examples of what you're asking for have been done
Yes. One of them is called BIND.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I don't see any innovation here and OpenDNS is already doing it too.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Peter Sunde is actually Norwegian and Finnish (family and citizenship), but he does live in Sweden.
Yeah, I don't see that happening. Xe Services would have a tough time even getting weapons into Sweden. And their "employees" would raise suspicion before they even enter the country due to the Europe wide travel/immigration information systems (see Schengen) and monitoring.
Nevermind that the functional civil society with police, SWAT, military forces, real security at all airports, air space control with modern fighter jets and so on. Of course they could get some illegal weapons, but that would hardly go unnoticed by local police. There is only so much you can do without getting noticed. Guns, shootings and murder is unusual here.
Even if they succeed in killing their target, how do you expect to escape? Shoot your way out of Europe? They wouldn't get far no matter what. And there's no bribing the prosecution to get out of jail.
There are "different rules" for operating in Western nations and places like Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. Where you can bribe the inefficient, corrupt police, if they actually care to look at all. Where you can ignore whatever borders the nation has, because what air force is going to control it? No, I think they would blink several times before doing anything in the West...
Comcast is doing WONDERS to educate the public about the importance of DNS.
Years ago, just after the SECOND major Comcast outage, I switched from Comcast nameservers to some pretty old and reliable AT&T nameservers at 4.2.2.1. Of course there was OpenDNS also but it's a pain to remember their DNS server IP addresses.
Since then I switched to Google's free DNS - same benefit, but faster and "8.8.8.8" and "8.8.4.4" is -incredibly- easy for people to remember.
Now with Comcast's THIRD major DNS outage, people resorted to using Facebook and Twitter using just their mobile phones. Guess what? Nearly everyone who bitched about Comcast got a reply from some friend, just go plug in these numbers in Network Settings... and many did! The word IS spreading....
oh goody, i want, i want, i want, how can i help make this a reality quicker the better....is there a list to help sign up for to stay on as proxy for these dns servers?
I am no longer a pirate of anything, but I used to be. My position was that if I can't afford something, but I can benefit enormously from acquiring it while no one is hurt by the "theft", I should certainly do so. Many software tools fell into this category. Now that I am a productive member of society, I do not pirate anything since I have the means to pay for it. However, to have lost that experience and learning made possible by the pirating could have drastically changed my status today.
The article seems to have no real details on the technical side -- does anyone know how this is supposed to work? In particular, how does it scale to billions of hosts? What stops somebody automatically registering all the names? Without central authority, how are disputes over where a name should point solved?
(Also, what happened to slashdot? It's been a couple of hours since the article was posted, and all the comments (reading at +2) are political -- does nobody else here care about the technical side of technology? :-( )
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
As much as I'd love to see a truly decentralized internetwork (p2p DNS and routing) idealogically, such a notion cannot replace the Internet as we have it today. In order to get anywhere reliably, you have to trust someone. You cannot have trust without an accountable authority. It's possible that you can get a modicum of trust via trusting a server that the people you trust have trusted (that was a mouthful), but in the end it will aggregate to a select few authorities at the root of it all. And then we have the same or similar issues to now.
I honestly cannot see how a true p2p domain name system can work and still be usable by someone who "just wants to surf the 'net".
Perhaps all we really need is a 'democratic' system - a select few members of the root DNS (geographically and politically separated of course) and a lookup system that queries each and selects the majority response as the correct response. At the very least, the domain name system should not be solely in the hands of one government.
If someone is wrong, don't insult; Educate.
Of course it doesn't block email and malware from communicating -- it's never been intended to. On the other and, what are you doing with malware installed, and allowing your email to d/l content from third party servers without your explicit approval?
You couldn't be more wrong (and name calling is a tactic often employed by those with a weak argument and/or weak mind). You seem to be confusing capitalism with corporatism (what we have in the US). I consider myself a capitalist (having run my own company for 20 years). I believe in the right to a fair day's wage for a day's labor. That's how I get my paycheck and that's how my employees get their paychecks.
What I don't agree with is that a corporation has the same (or more) rights than an individual. Corporations own no loyalty to their employees or any nation. Their only motive is profit - pretty much the definition of greed.
Despite your "Glen Beckian" view of the world (if you don't agree with me you are a socialist), when it comes to ideology, I tend to lean libertarian. I think the government sticks it's nose into far too many areas of our lives. Corporations have the financial capacity to protect their assets (especially digital assets) without getting government to do their dirty work for them.
In any case, I'm sure nothing I can post here will change your obvious "corporations are gods" viewpoint so I won't waste any more of my time.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
I've always understood that the reason the DNS is hierarchical isn't that programmers just thought it would be great for no other reason than that they like trees. My understanding is it is the very foundation of breaking up the DNS into smaller chunks that can be stored (and resolved) on multiple servers. DNS is *already* distributed, sort of, in its design. The issue is that there are central root and tld servers.
So, if I want to check email, and my mail client needs to contact mail.myisp.net, it first asks the root servers for the .net server, it asks the .net server for the myisp.net server, then it asks the myisp.net server for mail.myisp.net - that way, all the higher level servers can just answers to a small 'chunk' of the total dns namespace.
One way or another, any DNS system is going to need to splitup the namespace *somehow*, so if it isn't a tree, then what's it gonna be?
My first question would be, how is my 'domain' secured in this system so it can't be easily hijacked? If it does get hijacked, how do I ever get control of it again? How do I know a domain I am visiting wasn't hijacked?
These are issues facing the 'official' DNS system too, but generally, with the official DNS system, because of a fairly centralized control regime, it's at least difficult, usually, to hijack a domain, because you have to convince one of the levels of other servers to delegate authority over that domain to your servers. With a distributed system, how do you ensure that all the nodes give the same answer to a query? What's to stop a node from just lying? How do you detect if it's lying (some sort of cryptographic system would probably be needed)?
With the 'official' DNS, if my domain is hijacked, there are legal processes I can follow to try to prove that the domain should be rightly mine, and to have control restored if it's hijacked. Will there be any either technical or legal remedy for having your domain 'jacked in the P2P-DNS?
I'm not talking about anonymous proxies.
My workplace uses a proxy for all internet traffic so they can control who has access outside the WAN and Adblock is the only way I can avoid slamming up against twitter and facebook domains (in sidebars usually) which red-flag my account.
Solutions need to be supported at work, just as much as at home.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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 )?
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Are you retarded, or is your business selling host files? Maybe tech geeks know what host files are, but the average computer has no idea and no desire to know or utilize them. If it doesn't take them to youtube, google or their favorite homepage, then it is not important to them. So instead of preaching about how great they are, why not develop a FF plug-in that allows them to be used easily, reliably and unobtrusively?
who would put medicine they bought from a spam email into their body? The same people who would put illegal drugs from a stranger on a street corner in their body.
I don't have any street corners in my body, so I guess that's not a concern.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
So he's Finnished being Norwegian and decided to Sweden the pot by standing in as the new Swedish Chef? I'd love to see that Muppets episode!
Bork Bork Bork!
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
And dumbass, L2read. I am not a tech geek. I am however the most computer literate person in my extended family. And if I don't know WTF a host file is and ain't interested in using them, then what makes you think anyone less technically inclined than me will be, regardless of how many times you post links, and other useless junk? Most folks think IE is the internet. So instead of spewing posts about how host files are the next greatest thing in the world and will even make your dick bigger, how about writing an add-on for FF that will easily install and link to a host file so non-geeks can have it installed by semi-computer literate folks?
Just beacuse only a few see it does not mean the monster doesn't exist, and is feeding...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
WINS did have scopes that could, in theory, extend that, but MS didn't do a great job implementing it.
Thinking about this, there are too many issues with hooking into the WINS resolver. Nope, it's going to have to be something new if it's done right.
Otherwise, it's just going to be a new DNS Root and that's just repeating history.
That pesky Constitution keeps getting in the way of the paranoia nerds worst nightmares.
Dude, start taking your meds again. You're losing it.
Hopefully this inspires you to start stalking me again :D
...the internet was invented and implemented by the United States. It's OURS. If the powers that be decide "It's my bat and my ball, and I don't wanna play anymore" that's their choice. They own the bat and the ball. Don't like it, build your own and don't invite the US to play. OHHHH, but wait, that's what you're trying to do, but piggy back traffic on the network they control.
Kids, just wait till IP6...with bit-lengths that long, it'll be a lot easier to hide traffic, and by the time the powers that be get their heads out of their asses, something bigger and better will have come along.
"Oh no, the sky is falling, the sky is falling....some poor kid in Africa can't download the latest "The Office" torrent...." What you're all forgetting is that the internet is what it is today because of corporate backing and investment. I don't like it any more than you do, but you don't go to China and demand they speak English...
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Actually, my view of the world is an almost complete opposite of Glen Beck. More likely is you're projecting.
Yes, and copyright is infinite, so it is protecting us infinitely against the alien overlords.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Which absolutely means you are anti-capitalism. Period. End of discussion. Since you likely receive a paycheck because of capitalism, you're a hypocrite. If you make anything above minimum wage, I'll happily accept the difference so as to rid you of your hypocrisy.
You're completely off your head with this stuff. All I did was make a comment about the totally bizarre pricing structure for digital vs physical album. Do you see the bit where I said this justified copyright violation? No, because it's not there. I buy the physical CD and wonder why anyone buys album downloads.
Or did you confuse me with the GP poster or something?