[Freedombox-discuss] DNS solution that doesn't require paying money or using a central server.

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On 07/04/2011 05:33 AM, Fellow Traveler wrote:
> 1) People can use any "DNS name" they want for their website. It will
> never be "already taken".

Another way to express what i think you're trying to say here is:

 "your desired name may already be taken, and anyone can choose to use
it even after you have started to use it"

fwiw, i don't think this is the worst thing in the world -- it just
makes clear what is true, which is that human-memorable names are in
short supply, and conflicts are inevitable.

At some level, there needs to be a way for people to learn about and
resolve conflicts.

In the current global naming scheme (DNS), conflicts can happen and
holders of a domain name can be effectively shut down by powerful
adversaries simply through an attack on the DNS; their correspondents
will have no recourse, and no way to find them.

In proposals like yours (and other distributed/decentralized
approaches), the mechanism and policy for resolving conflicts moves to
the user.  This is probably seen as burdensome by some people ("why
should i have to care that there are two people claiming to control
example.org?"), but the current system implicitly gives power to the
centralized authority.  If we can make that kind of reliance optional
and explicit instead of mandatory and implicit, we will be pushing in
the right direction.

	--dkg

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