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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

#61
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

it was considered infeasible until bitcoin demonstrated that it was feasible, as zooko agreed: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko

http://web.archive.org/web/20210118172102/https://squaretria...

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

#62
post #53

Little known fact: your Sci-Hub downloads are not private - https://sci-hub.ru/stats has historic access logs with IP addresses, paper identifiers, and timestamps, and plans to publish more logs in the future.

Your link seems to contradict your description,

- "To protect the privacy of Sci-Hub users, we agreed that she would first aggregate users’ geographic locations to the nearest city using data from Google Maps; no identifying inter- net protocol (IP) addresses were given to me. (The data set and details on how it was analyzed are freely accessible at http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q447c.)"

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1126/science.352.6285.508 ("Bohannon, J. (2016). Who’s downloading pirated [sic] papers? Everyone. Science, 352(6285), 508–512")

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

#64
post #13

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…

>land grab model where the person who snagged a name 30 years ago now owns it forever for free?

This is already the case with the current dns, since paying $10 per year is pretty much nothing to any middle class investor, so they do in fact "own" it forever for "free", relatively speaking.

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

#65
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.…

Good points, but I have to point out that what you're describing is literally what happened with our current system, just less extreme.

I was recently quoted $250,000 to buy a .com that is not being used and as far as I can tell has never been used but some guy bought in the 90s when I was a young child. Aside from the level of extreme is that really different from "You could then probably buy readable domains for exorbitant amounts of cryptocoins."

You touch on what I think the core issue is with domains when you talk about suing Verisign. In some very limited cases, it's possible through litigation to get a domain you feel like you should have. But therein lies the crux of the whole issue: What standard needs to be met before you qualify for a domain name, especially one that is in contention?

In cryptocurrency, the criteria to receive the currency was originally solving problems with computing power because they needed some arbitrary measure. In the world of domain names, it's been a lot of different things but mostly just money and time.

That standard - what "qualifies" you to own a domain over someone else I think would have to be decided before truly effective regulation can be made or enforced, blockchain or not. Right now it's basically temporal, with some carveouts from lawsuits for trademarks.

The current regulations around how domain names work is woefully inadequate (like most regulation around technology) and gives outsized power to private entities. This is something that I think people don't talk about enough when they criticize blockchains.

If there was a better job being done with public policy, you'd likely have less people who think a system where there's no way of imposing real regulation is desirable.

It's especially bad with technology. My go to example is Apple's App Store, but this area is a good topic too.

To me, a happy mix of public/private policy would be best. The government allowing private TLDs, but regulating them. An anti squatting law, price capping new TLD name registrations, an enshrined "specificity system" to claiming an unused (or even used) domain would make the situation so much better, but it'll never happen.

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

#66

I just wanted to take a moment to say what a lifechanging tool sci-hub has been for research. In doing research for a big writing project on Mars I ended up with a folder of maybe 800 scientific and technical papers, some of them dating back to 1910. This is material it would have been hard to collect even with access to a major university library. Online publishers, meanwhile, demand extortionate per-paper fees for…

> Online publishers, meanwhile, demand extortionate per-paper fees for access, including to papers that started in the public domain, or are long out of copyright.

That these online publishers are able to rent collect for papers that are in the public domain, or long out of copyright, is an example of how broken our system is.

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

#67
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know domain sniping already happens right? There is extensive auctioning infrastructure. And most of the good names were claimed a long time ago. The only way to get an existing domain name without paying the owner for it is to sue over trademark violations or stuff like that which often will cost more than just buying it.

Domain sniping already happens, sure. However, squatters need to invest time and energy into registering these domains whereas a cryptographic system can do all that offline inside the data centers of the cryptosquatter. Some TLDs have provisions against domain squatters and in case of copyright disputes, you can sue the squatters (or request ICANN to release the domain if that isn't possible for some reason). If you…

> However, squatters need to invest time and energy into registering these domains whereas a cryptographic system...

The auction system is actually fairer since it gives enough time for every party to bid the highest amount according to their interest instead of relying on sniping services like in the current legacy systems.

> whereas a cryptographic system can do all that offline inside the data centers of the cryptosquatter.

what does this even mean?

>Some TLDs have provisions against domain squatters and in case of copyright disputes, you can sue the squatters

Sure, but this is also a double edged sword, since it also opens up abuse i.e. reverse domain hijacking which is a real and common problem. Just this week Charles Schwab tried to rob the legitimate owner of a domain that contained "Schwab", while they tried to hide the fact that the owner's name is also Schwab. [0]

>With crypto-TLDs, nike.com and microsoft.com would be registered by a malicious player

That's why good builders put in the time and effort to reserve these names from the start.

>The lack of enforceability makes the entire system pretty useless the moment it takes off.

Sovereignty has its price. No system is perfect, everything has its trade-offs, but I see a lot of people highlighting the best properties of the legacy system while ignoring the best properties of the new systems. The comparisons should be fair and compare the full range of positives and negatives instead of picking and comparing in a bad faith manner.

[0] https://domainnamewire.com/2023/01/24/charles-schwab-tries-t...

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

#68
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.

Handshake requires domain owners to pay a biennial "mining fee" to maintain their names, even for names that were "airdropped" to FOSS projects. This is no less of a grift than ICANN.

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

#69
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[cricket tunes intensify]

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

#70

I just wanted to take a moment to say what a lifechanging tool sci-hub has been for research. In doing research for a big writing project on Mars I ended up with a folder of maybe 800 scientific and technical papers, some of them dating back to 1910. This is material it would have been hard to collect even with access to a major university library. Online publishers, meanwhile, demand extortionate per-paper fees for…

> Online publishers, meanwhile, demand extortionate per-paper fees for access, including to papers that started in the public domain, or are long out of copyright. That these online publishers are able to rent collect for papers that are in the public domain, or long out of copyright, is an example of how broken our system is.

It's also an indictment of academic culture that they can't overcome their collective action problem. Of course, the important people in academia largely became that way because of the currency of the brands of the journals they published in. Giving up the fixation on status quo brands probably threatens in some way the power of status quo academics.

edit: academics are who we're supposed to depend on in order to organize and maintain ourselves as post-Enlightenment people, and they're somehow inextricably caught up in such a simple and open swindle. Even fully knowing the real consequences of locking away some stray piece of knowledge from the random asshole who will stumble upon a way to change the world with it.

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