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Title: Three days till we surrender control of the internet
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Published: Sep 28, 2016
Author: self
Post Date: 2016-09-28 17:41:48 by titorite
Keywords: None
Views: 625
Comments: 20
So how yall felling about that? Anybody wondering if governments like China or Sudia Arabia already have agents inside ICANN just waiting for the moment? 3 days... 3 days and we lose authority over what our tax dollars paid to create. Gotta wonder if their is any truth to that killswitch legend. I mean I don't believe it but I do believe in human greed and incompetence fucking up things. What do yall think? Will it go over smooth, will something happen, do ya even care one way or the other?
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#4. To: titorite (#0)
To be clear, what is being surrendered is not control of any networking traffic infrastructure. As I understand it, it is only authority to decide what web addresses translate to what IP addresses. Normally, that is a substantial amount of power, and that is presently the case. One domain that comes to mind libertyreserve.com. This was a finance site similar to paypal that allowed people to send and receive funds to one another. I had (and maybe still have) a liberty reserve account with almost $40 in it, but the feds seized liberty reserve because they were not laundering money according to properly prescribed federal protocols. Or however they'd prefer to describe it. Even though the web site was hosted somewhere in central America, the feds were able to seize the domain name, and you can see now what you get when you visit libertyreserve.com. Because the feds have control, it can do this. Will the ICANN xfer make it harder to the feds to seize & shutdown web sites like this? I imagine it will, but will it make it much harder, I don't know. I'm sure agreements are in place to permit govs to do this sort of thing when desired. However, there is another possible long term result of this, and that may be the eventual decentralization of the entire ICANN/Domain name registration system. Enter the "blockchain" technology. Blockchains were devised and currently exist to facilitate bitcoin. A blockchain is essentially a highly redundant internet database. Many, many copies of this DB exist all over the net, and one is only considered to own bitcoins if all of the DB's say you do. Any transactions are registered with one "node" of this blockchain, and the transaction is then copied to all other nodes over the net, and while one or 2 nodes could be fooled and passed fake information saying I was a bitcoin millionaire, it's impossible to do this for all nodes on the whole internet, and the blockchain system would eventually figure out that the 2 nodes were fooled with fake data and it would self repair, and I'd be poor again. In this way, the whole blockchain system is completely decentralized but also completely secure, so no government or other entity can seize bitcoins belonging to anyone. So what's this got to do with ICANN & domain names? Blockchain tech can be applied to other uses. In the same way blockchain tech is saying who owns what bitcoins, blockchain tech could also be used to determine who own what domain name. Everything would be restricted by use of encryption, so when one person sells or transfers a domain name to another, they need to unlock, transfer, and relock the domain name for the new owner. Using such a system, no gov has the power to seize any domain name unless the owner consents to it, or (alternatively) the thieving party is able to obtain the private key pertaining to the domain name. Ergo, under such a system, ICANN would become obsolete. Neither the USA nor any international body would have any control over domain names. Sure there are ramifications that would need to be addressed. The loss of encryption keys, and cybersquatters that might register any and all domain names for free with the hope of selling them which is done now, though they must pay for the registration under ICANN. But such issues can be remedied. Blockchain tech can be applied to other things as well, such as copyrighting works, land ownership, diplomas & certificates.... perhaps about everything related to information that is currently managed by governments big and small, including of course domain name ownership. Imagine a world where many such services no longer need a governing authority to manage them? Domain names could be first (well, second after bitcoin) use of blockchain tech. If this international body starts to play havoc with domain names for whatever reason, expected or unexpected, I would look to the internet software development community to create a blockchain based replacement for ICANN. So.... I'm not too worried about it in the long run. Technology is growing at an ever increasing pace, and our world will be dragged along with it, kicking and screaming if need be.
#14. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#7)
lol - that looks about right.
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#7. To: Pinguinite, Lod, sneakypete (#4)
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