The Pirate Bay Loses Its Main Domain Name In Court Battle (thehackernews.com)

Dave Knott writes: The world's most popular torrent website, The Pirate Bay, is suffering a major blow after the Swedish Court ruled Thursday that it will seize the domain names 'ThePirateBay.se' and 'PirateBay.se' and hand over them to the state. This is the latest development in an ongoing legal tug-of-war between The Pirate Bay and Swedish prosecutors, which has at various times seen the courts rule in favor of either side, only to see the case proceed via further appeals. Despite previous criminal convictions, the torrent site has always remained functioning by moving to different web domains several times. However, this time, The Pirate Bay loses its main .SE domain, the world's 225th most popular website according to the Alexa ranking, as reported by the Swedish newspaper DN.

Comments

Open and Free DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we need an open and free alternative to the current DNS system, which can't so readily be controlled by governments. I despise piracy, but I don't agree with seizing domain names. It's way too easy for this power to be abused for other things like censorship. Could Germany use this to force hate speech or Holocaust denial sites offline, for example? While I find such things repugnant, the only speech truly in need of protection is that which some people find offensive.

Re:Open and Free DNS

[Thanatiel]

Open and Free DNS ? I believe you underestimate the problem.

There is no need for an alternative for DNS.
The only need is for an alternative TLD or a parallel ROOT : DNS itself is easy.

At home I had some issues with an ISP doing funky redirections on DNS.
I ended up buying an ARM box (Odroid, Raspberry, ...) and simply setup a validating/caching nameserver. This of course could be setup on one's desktop computer.

If I want to add rules for a .whatever I easily can. I only need to have the zone somewhere. Either edited "by hand" on the machine, either downloaded from some data server (http, ftp, ...) either loaded from an authoritative nameserver (probably the easiest as nobody in his right mind blocks 53).

It would have to be set on multiple servers around the world, from a known v4 and v6. list of IPs.
It also should be a secure zone to avoid tampering. Between NSEC & NSEC3 the choice amounts as how easy it would be to enumerate the content of the zone.

Making this a package/installer for less technically-minded users isn't a challenge.

And now comes the Open and Free : the "only" real problem to solve here would be fair/decentralized management. And yes, this is a biggie. There are no good rules (it always involve challenge of ownership at some point and in the real world : laws, rules and lawyers).
A few ideas come to mind. For example, something involving a PGP chain of trust authenticating zones/configurations. I simply don't think they would work in the end.

The current "monopoly" requires a lot work from teams of technical operators, developers, lawyers and, yes, politicians.
It's hard to put it a fault because protection of for what may be construed as criminal activity is not its chief concern.

In my humble opinion there are two realistic choices: using a TLD that has no reason to comply to laws of another country, or changing the law of said country.

PS: thank you so much Slashdot to make me spend 20 minutes to find that the acronym that covers NSEC and SEC3 was lame. Yet another reason to forget you exist.

Find an alternative to DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

DNS had a purely functional role back when it was invented, but that was an era of academic innocence, and those days are long gone.

Since then, domain names have become an instrument of suppression and censorship by governments and the copyright cartel, a business for domain squatters and litigants, an advertising vehicle for ISPs, and an all-round protection racket for the registrars. DNS has acquired many of the bad properties of a centralized system instead of the robustness that was originally intended for the Internet, and it is now a significant liability.

There are many other ways in which names can be associated with IP addresses and other online data. Pick one of them, or invent a new protocol and describe it in an ad hoc RFC, then use it. People will follow.

Suggested properties for a replacement: distributed, resistent to damage and censorship, cryptographically secure, free of charge and not requiring centralized registration, immutable, and persistent forever instead of suffering the domain bit-rot we have today. Also, very importantly, it should use names that are structurally distinct from domain names in DNS, to avoid friction. Leave that old system to the old guard, may it keep them happy. It's time for a better one.