US DNS Seizures countered

[Jay]

Well, that didn't take long. A salvo from decentralized concerned parties. Is this your work Cow?

BitTorrent Based DNS To Counter US Domain Seizures

Written by Ernesto on November 30, 2010 The domain seizures by the United States authorities in recent days and upcoming legislation that could make similar takeovers even easier in the future, have inspired a group of enthusiasts to come up with a new, decentralized and BitTorrent-powered DNS system. This system will exchange DNS information through peer-to-peer transfers and will work with a new .p2p domain extension.


http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-b...izures-101130/

[shiny!]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

TPTB are hanging themselves with their own rope. Excessive, ever-increasing suppression of freedom is causing a backlash of innovation to ensure that freedom continues.

This could be the next evolutionary leap of communication in the making. Rough times at present because Evil does not give up easily, but lot of good will come out of this in the long run.

[Starving Steve]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

TPTB are hanging themselves with their own rope. Excessive, ever-increasing suppression of freedom is causing a backlash of innovation to ensure that freedom continues.

This could be the next evolutionary leap of communication in the making. Rough times at present because Evil does not give up easily, but lot of good will come out of this in the long run.

Please write in simple English or in simple Spanish; and please do NOT write this garbage in meaningless and vague babble such as: US authorities, P2P, DNS, established enthusiasts, Bit Torrent-powered, DNS system, Bit Torrent-based application, p2p TLD, .p2p domain extension, TPTB.

Please write a short and simple sentence beginning with a subject, then a verb, and then an object, if there is an object or an in-direct object. Start with the subject: I want a pronoun or a noun. Then write the verb or verb phrase. Keep this real simple! A sentence in communication should be about 10 or 20 words, maximum.

Please tell me which file I would put your babble into: Area 54? Greenspanese? techno-babble?
pot-head communication? New-era thinking? John Birch Society crap?

I am the certified-moron here, so please explain all this babble to me in the simplist terms possible.

And give me a one-sentence paragraph to sum-up or conclude what you are writing. What is the "take-away message"?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

Well, that didn't take long. A salvo from decentralized concerned parties. Is this your work Cow?

BitTorrent Based DNS To Counter US Domain Seizures

This is being considered for a proposed new Top Level Domain (TLD), .p2p (stands for peer-to-peer.) It is not for the existing TLD's, such as .com, .org, .net, .edu, .mil, .biz, .info, .uk, .us, .au, and nearly 200 or so others. If "Big Brother" decides that itulip.com or thepythoniccow.us should redirect people to a "Seized" graphic with impressive looking Government logos, then thus it shall be. Sufficient laws will be enacted in the nations that so choose to make it illegal to provide any DNS Service from those nations that circumvents such a redirection.

This is consistent with what seems to me to be the long term direction of the Internet.

Sufficient legal, monitoring and enforcement infrastructure is being put in place to control "main street". Most people, most of the time, in most co-operating countries, will not get outside that controlled area.

Sure, competent techies and fringe players have and will continue to send packets over the underlying Internet structure that are not controlled by or read by (decrypted by) the authorities. This is about controlling the flock of 100 white sheep, not the 1 stray black sheep.

[Starving Steve]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

You seem to be "in the know". So explain to me why Bernie Ward of KGO Radio in San Francisco is in the gulag for child-porn possession. Someone sent him child-porn on his computer: Who sent it?

Bernie Ward, the voice of liberalism, is in the gulag. That fact is interesting! The religious-right in the South hated Bernie Ward, so Bernie vanishes..... Why? Fill-in the details for me in plain English, o en espanol muy claro.

www.kgo.com

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

Please write in simple English ...

Well, Steve, it is not obvious to me that I am the right person to answer your request, but I'll give it a try.

Kindly have mercy on my soul if the following gibberish makes no sense.

Some large organizations, in particular the United States Government and some major international corporations, use the Internet to keep us ordinary people informed (fed their sales pitches and propaganda), to sell us stuff and to monitor us. Let me call these large organizations TPTB (the powers that be.)

I will get back to these TPTB later on, below, but first let me describe the DNS.

One critical piece of the Internet is the domain naming system (DNS.) Domains here means the names of websites, such as "yahoo.com", "itulip.com", and "thepythoniccow.us". Internet users (you and me) see these domain names regularly. It is the job of the domain naming system (DNS) to figure out, when you ask to view a page on iTulip.com, where to send that request.

For each domain name, there is a computer out there somewhere on this planet which provides the web pages for that domain. The computer that provides the web pages for thepythoniccow.us is not the same as the one that provides web pages for iTulip.com. I manage one of these web servers (or hire people to manage it), and Eric Janszen manages the other (or hires people to manage it.)

The Domain Naming System (DNS) answers the basic question:

Given a domain name (e.g. iTulip.com), find the web server responsible for serving up that name's web pages.

When I type in thepythoniccow.us in my web browser (or click on a link that goes there, more often), a bunch of computers, beginning with the PC in front of my nose, quickly figure out that my request for that web page should be sent to a web server I have setup (in Dallas) to handle that website (thepythoniccow.us.)

Aside:

I don't actually know where thepythoniccow.us web server is. It might not be in Dallas. But I pay some people (nice folks at linode.com) to run it and keep it connected to the Internet. And I pay some other nice folks (at namecheap.com) to make the right settings in the world-wide Domain Naming System (DNS) to ensure that whenever you or I ask for a web page at thepythoniccow.us, it gets to this server that I rent from linode.com.

Anyhow, back to the main topic and TPTB.

Just as the Powers That Be (TPTB, see above) determine where the main roads and highways go, and just as they determine where the major airports and train stations go, similarly they are developing their control of the DNS system, which determines where your web page requests go.

Similarly, just as their control is not complete, and they cannot usually stop me from going off-road in some barren area (like near the border with Mexico, say), similarly their control over web packets is not complete. But they invent enough excuses to control what they want to control, for the most part.

The control of TPTB is not complete. I can and regularly do send packets over the Internet which do not depend on someone else's DNS service to get correctly routed, and I can and regularly do send packets over the Internet that are strongly encrypted and cannot be read by TPTB.

However, most folks don't do such things. Most folks just drive on the roads provided by the government (outside of their own driveway), and fly in and out of airports provided by (or controlled by, anyway) the government.

Similarly most folks only access web pages using website names (domain names) that are controlled by TPTB, and most folks only send information across the web that TPTB can read if they want to bad enough.

The couple of posts right before this one describe a proposed .p2p set of domain names that do not use the usual TPTB controlled DNS system. If this happens, and if I want to run another web site, say "the_cows_stolen_windoz.p2p" which has say stolen Microsoft Windows software, then the government would not be able to "seize" my web site name and redirect it to their ugly "seized" graphic.

Granted, if I am successful in my stolen windoz endeavor, I am sure the government or Microsoft can find some other way to make my life miserable. But they would not be able to just push a button on their computer and steal my website's name.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

So explain to me why Bernie Ward of KGO Radio in San Francisco is in the gulag for child-porn possession. Someone sent him child-porn on his computer: Who sent it?

I have not been following Bernie Ward's case. I knew who he was when I lived in the San Francisco area, but I was a right-wing nut-job at the time and did not listen to KGO nor to Bernie Ward.

From the ever reliable (hah!) Wikipedia article on Bernie Ward, it seems that he got in trouble not for receiving child porn, but for sending it.

My instincts are not to categorize this as a right versus left battle, but rather to categorize this as a big guys versus little guys battle. The big guys (aka TPTB) endeavor to increase their control over the Internet, and child porn is one of those things that enough people find sufficiently objectionable that it is a suitable excuse to justify increased control.

I don't support child porn. I also don't support excessive centralization into a single opaquely inter-connected oligarchy (TPTB) of any and all powers and authorities they claim they need to "keep us safe from all that threatens us."

But whether this has anything to do with Bernie Ward or not ... I really don't know. I just suspect, as I usually suspect.

[renewable]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

Please write in simple English or in simple Spanish; and please do NOT write this garbage in meaningless and vague babble such as: US authorities, P2P, DNS, established enthusiasts, Bit Torrent-powered, DNS system, Bit Torrent-based application, p2p TLD, .p2p domain extension, TPTB.

It is not meaningless, otherwise there would be no meaning to explain.

At present, when you type in a web address the system that tells your computer where in the world to look for the webserver with the pages you want is to some extent controlled by the government. This new initiative may replace that system for some addresses (ones that end in .p2p) by 'people power', where the information that links the web address to the webserver isn't held in a central system, but is shared on everyone's home computers.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

where the information that links the web address to the webserver isn't held in a central system

Well, both the existing system and the proposed .p2p system are somewhat centralized and somewhat distributed.

One way or another, sooner or later, someone has to decide what web addresses (what I called domain names above) go to what web servers. That critical step, assigning names to servers (to their IP address, to be precise) is essentially a centralized operation. About the only distribution practical is the distribution of authority. Portions of the name space can be carved off and control of that sub-space delegated to others. Requests can be accepted by the centralized authorities from others to make changes. But it is always clear (in a distributed sort of way) exactly where the authority to make any given name change lies.

Once decided, the implementation of any of these name resolution services is highly distributed. There are (I'd guess) tens or hundreds of millions of DNS servers and services out there. Most of them are quite vestigal, handing out a few local numbers they are responsible for and querying some other DNS server for the rest. This would be the same with .p2p as with the existing domains. The difference would be that the .p2p DNS servers would run on the PC's of its end users and be more resistant to hijacking by the authorities.

[Starving Steve]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

Well, both the existing system and the proposed .p2p system are somewhat centralized and somewhat distributed.

One way or another, sooner or later, someone has to decide what web addresses (what I called domain names above) go to what web servers. That critical step, assigning names to servers (to their IP address, to be precise) is essentially a centralized operation. About the only distribution practical is the distribution of authority. Portions of the name space can be carved off and control of that sub-space delegated to others. Requests can be accepted by the centralized authorities from others to make changes. But it is always clear (in a distributed sort of way) exactly where the authority to make any given name change lies.

Once decided, the implementation of any of these name resolution services is highly distributed. There are (I'd guess) tens or hundreds of millions of DNS servers and services out there. Most of them are quite vestigal, handing out a few local numbers they are responsible for and querying some other DNS server for the rest. This would be the same with .p2p as with the existing domains. The difference would be that the .p2p DNS servers would run on the PC's of its end users and be more resistant to hijacking by the authorities.

Ever since messages were on letters sent in envelopes thru the post office--- and that wasn't that long ago--- one has had to trust in the government. The government could also wire-tap your phone. This is just how things were and still are.

Yes, I am concerned about government becoming too big and spying on everything and everyone, but these concerns have to be balanced with the need for governments to stop terrorists.

Or would you want to get on-board a commercial aircraft without security checks? I would not! I am a coward, and I want to live.

So, there has to be a balance. I'm not smart enough to know where the balance between security and the personal right of privacy should be struck.

I trust Canada, and I trust America. I trust the Western World because the Western World has a democratic tradition. But I also have concerns, just as you do.

[renewable]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

Well, both the existing system and the proposed .p2p system are somewhat centralized and somewhat distributed.

One way or another, sooner or later, someone has to decide what web addresses (what I called domain names above) go to what web servers. That critical step, assigning names to servers (to their IP address, to be precise) is essentially a centralized operation. About the only distribution practical is the distribution of authority. Portions of the name space can be carved off and control of that sub-space delegated to others. Requests can be accepted by the centralized authorities from others to make changes. But it is always clear (in a distributed sort of way) exactly where the authority to make any given name change lies.

Once decided, the implementation of any of these name resolution services is highly distributed. There are (I'd guess) tens or hundreds of millions of DNS servers and services out there. Most of them are quite vestigal, handing out a few local numbers they are responsible for and querying some other DNS server for the rest. This would be the same with .p2p as with the existing domains. The difference would be that the .p2p DNS servers would run on the PC's of its end users and be more resistant to hijacking by the authorities.

When the authorities subvert DNS, don't they do it through the TLD registrar, who then changes the records in the 13 main rootservers - they don't directly act on the rootservers. If this is the case, then the new p2p system would have to have some kind of distributed .p2p registrar system to overcome this problem.

[Munger]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

+1 for linode

(off topic, but had to do it)

[mesyn191]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

Yes, I am concerned about government becoming too big and spying on everything and everyone, but these concerns have to be balanced with the need for governments to stop terrorists.

Blocking DNS servers selectively or on a broad scale, wire tapping, and other forms of domestic surveillance wouldn't have stopped 9/11, Oklahoma City bombing, or the Una Bomber. They have nothing to do with providing actual security at all.

At the very best they provide security theater. At the very worst they are invasions of our privacy and the beginnings of a Orwellian State a la East Germany prior to The Wall falling.

So, there has to be a balance. I'm not smart enough to know where the balance between security and the personal right of privacy should be struck.

Sure and that balance must be struck in favor of privacy, ethics, rights, and respect for the individual. If you can't respect anonymous individual's rights/privacy you sure as hell cannot respect the rights/privacy of the anonymous masses.

But I also have concerns, just as you do.

Most of your and others concerns on such things have been manufactured by the gov. and media. We've had terrorists and plane jackers and worse for over a century in the world and yes even the US without all these new privacy and rights' infringing laws and gov. organizations.

[mesyn191]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

When the authorities subvert DNS, don't they do it through the TLD registrar, who then changes the records in the 13 main rootservers - they don't directly act on the rootservers. If this is the case, then the new p2p system would have to have some kind of distributed .p2p registrar system to overcome this problem.

Supposedly this is exactly what they're working on. Think of it as an open Tor network.

[Starving Steve]

Re: US DNS Seizures countered

When the authorities subvert DNS, don't they do it through the TLD registrar, who then changes the records in the 13 main rootservers - they don't directly act on the rootservers. If this is the case, then the new p2p system would have to have some kind of distributed .p2p registrar system to overcome this problem.

All this stuff is new to me because I have not studied modern computing nor the internet. But I have concerns, just as you do.

If you get quite specific here about your concerns, you might be passing information out over the internet to the bunch running Iran. Thus, what the fix is for one problem tells the bunch in Iran what the fix was and how they could subvert it........ So, be careful what you write about your concerns.

Best to communicate face-to-face, maybe in an office or a boardroom to solve these problems.

This is not Cold War hysteria. We really do have an enemy that is determined to destroy us and our way of life. This is reality, not hysteria. This is a real war.