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Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

#51

Post by verdverm »

Yeahsureok wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certificates are free, and all certificates are surveilled with a cryptographically secure append-only log. Meanwhile, if you think the biggest problem with the DNS infrastructure we have now is rent-seeking, take a look at the blockchain alternatives that have been proposed. There might be no modern analog to "attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge" more fitting than blockchain DNS.

> attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge Handshake reserved the top 100,000 Alexa domains and allowed all trademark name holders to claim theirs. Not to mention the ten million in FOSS grants for developers to build tooling Sadly the ideologues will somehow decry their attempts for an alternative while defending the indefensible ICAAN.

What about everyone else after the 100k? What recourse are they left with when their domain is/was taken by another party? Which party should own the domain? How would doubly registered domains be resolved?

Re: Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

#52

Post by politician »

tptacek wrote: post #12
politician wrote: post #9

If there’s an area where a decentralized blockchain has application, it is surely DNS and the rent-seeking certificate infrastructure.

Certificates are free, and all certificates are surveilled with a cryptographically secure append-only log. Meanwhile, if you think the biggest problem with the DNS infrastructure we have now is rent-seeking, take a look at the blockchain alternatives that have been proposed. There might be no modern analog to "attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge" more fitting than blockchain DNS.

Thomas, I’m not sure what you mean when you say that certificates are free. Self-signed certs are free, but only situationally useful in a business context. Let’s Encrypt certs are free, but not usable in all contexts. GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Verisign will still gladly charge $50-$1500 for certs will various features like $50/SAN, and extended validation. If you want to terminate TLS at an AWS managed edge resource, the happy path is ACM. These are “free”, but arguably you’re paying for the cert with the load balancer or edge resource.

There’s no difference between a blockchain and a cryptographically secure write ahead log, indeed that is how blockchains are defined. Perhaps you assumed that I meant cryptocurrency when I said blockchain? I did not.

(Sorry for the delayed reply.)

Re: Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

#54

Post by detrites »

jeroenhd wrote: post #37
detrites wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple solution for that: to buy a domain on-chain that has an equivalent off-chain, the existing owner first needs to prove ownership of that equivalent domain. After, it can be sold freely (as uniques could already). The on-chain contract could be written such that a buyer generates a token, supplied to an on-chain verification oracle that checks token.owned-domain.TLD exists, and if it does grants issuan…

What happens to these domains when the "legacy" domain expires and gets re-bought? Do you lose access when you stop paying? What if someone managed to hack your DNS, does it and its integration with TLS then break the supposed security guarantees? This system just seems to be traditional DNS with extra steps and a lack of manual recourse against bad actors, to be honest.

The first question is irrelevant and affects nothing - the same owner proves ownership of both at the outset, if they choose to let the legacy version expire, well they chose that - so who cares what happens to it?

I suppose it could be configurable at purchase to allow it to be a recurring verification, if that was desired, but it would seem to overcomplicate for no reason. "Subscribing" to domains each year is legacy inefficiency.

I'm not sure what you mean about DNS, any chain-based system would be... chain-based, and therefore cryptographically-assured that a domain points where the owner chooses. "Not your keys, not your domain" applies.

Re: Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

#55

Post by viksit »

verdverm wrote: post #50
px43 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of ENS doesn't meet your expectations? It wasn't designed to replace DNS, but there are an increasing number of people using it for that.

It is not always about what something is not doing, but rather the unintended (often malicious) use cases it enables without any way to prevent or mitigate.

curious what “malicious” use cases a decentralized name registry enables that dns doesn’t?

Re: Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

#56

Post by DennisP »

teddyh wrote: post #13
politician wrote: post #9

If there’s an area where a decentralized blockchain has application, it is surely DNS and the rent-seeking certificate infrastructure.

The “rent-seeking certificate infrastructure” could be solved if web browsers used the DNS (and DNSSEC) to validate certificates. The DNS, on the other hand, is more tricky. If you want human-readable and globally distinct (and stable) names, you have to have a centralized structure to keep track of who has what name. The best we could come up with was the DNS, which is at least hierarchical instead of completely mon…

> If you want human-readable and globally distinct (and stable) names, you have to have a centralized structure to keep track of who has what name.

Apps on blockchains already play the role of that centralized structure. The most successful I'm aware of is ENS on Ethereum. Whatever economic model you prefer can be implemented this way.

Re: Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

#57

Post by cdev_gl »

gruez wrote: post #42
zozbot234 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human-readable names can potentially be pseudo-random, and thus securely generated. What's hard (indeed, considered largely infeasible) is meaningful , decentralized, secure names.

>Human-readable names can potentially be pseudo-random No matter how you dice it, getting humans to remember 128 bits of entropy is going to be a non-starter. Encoding those 128 bits using words doesn't really solve the problem.

I was going to argue that remembering "CorrectBatteryHorseStaple.com" is leagues easier than remembering an 128 bit number, but then I did the math and using the 20k most common english words to encode 128bits you'd need an 8 word phrase, which pretty much solidifies the point you've made.

I mean, people can recite poetry far longer, even nonsense poetry ("Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / did gyre and gimble in the wabe") so it's not impossible. But generally speaking, yeah. Nobody wants to navigate to that bit of jabberwocky instead of google.com

It does kind of make me long for the days of the HOSTS file, where anyone might alias a hard-to-remember address as something locally meaningful.

Re: Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

#58

Post by DennisP »

jeroenhd wrote: post #20
dimmke wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what? You're right. That's literally the only proposed blockchain application I think I've ever read that I think would actually work.

I don't think it would. The moment the blockchain would start getting any traction, the big blockchain companies would use their capital to get their hands on every recognizable domain name and within days the only remaining "domains" would look like passwords. You could then probably buy readable domains for exorbitant amounts of cryptocoins. I prefer the current registrar setup over anarchist blockchain hellscapes.…

I don't think that's happened on ENS so far, though there is some domain squatting just like there is on DNS.

Though ENS doesn't implement this, it'd be possible to add paid arbitration by humans for resolving trademark disputes. You couldn't get damages but you could get the domain.

Re: Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub’s .SE Domain Name Offline

#60

Post by kelthuzad »

verdverm wrote: post #51
Yeahsureok wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge Handshake reserved the top 100,000 Alexa domains and allowed all trademark name holders to claim theirs. Not to mention the ten million in FOSS grants for developers to build tooling Sadly the ideologues will somehow decry their attempts for an alternative while defending the indefensible ICAAN.

What about everyone else after the 100k? What recourse are they left with when their domain is/was taken by another party? Which party should own the domain? How would doubly registered domains be resolved?

They will remain on their original tld, so brand.com will remain brand.com, they just won't automatically receive their own brand tld, unless they manually start the auction themselves.
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