NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Take a Tiny First Step Toward Controlling Your Internet Addressing Destiny
Take a Tiny First Step Toward Controlling Your Internet Addressing Destiny
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000783.html
Greetings. ICANN is preparing to inflict hundreds, and then
thousands, of new top-level domains (TLDs) onto the global community
of Internet users, which will serve mainly to sow confusion among
consumers, and award vast monetary treasures to the tiny set of
entities poised to rake in the dough as the masters of the existing
domain name system -- see: "It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain
(TLD) Lunacy!" ( http://bit.ly/dh6zOf [Lauren's Blog] ).
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is forging ahead -- despite the pleas of
experts and major Internet firms -- with COICA legislation, that
would leverage the domain name registration system into a tool for
global Internet censorship ( http://bit.ly/9OYmy1 [Washington Post] ).
An alternative Internet name to address mapping system -- fully
distributed, open source, fault-tolerant, secure, flexible, and not
subject to centralized constraints, meddling, and censorship -- will
take significant time to develop, and a long transition period for
deployment.
But I'd like to offer a modest suggestion to perhaps help start down
this important path.
Please take a look at:
http://www.vortex.com/{NETWORKINFO}.txt
The five lines in that file (domain name, name servers, contact
address), represent the crucial data (other than more detailed contact
information, which could be easily added) that anyone on the planet
needs to locate my associated Internet servers. Virtually everyone
with a Web site pays a domain name registrar -- year after year -- to
maintain this sort of largely static information, while simultaneously
enabling the associated registries as centralized points for
controlling access to sites, shutting down sites, and perhaps very
soon for broad site censorship regimes.
We can do much better -- and we should get started now. There are
myriad issues involved, including some formidable "chicken and egg"
dilemmas associated with site discoverability. Security,
authentication, validation, and a wide range of policy concerns also
come into play.
I believe that all of these issues and problems are capable of being
worked and solved. The result could ultimately be an Internet
naming/addressing ecosystem that will be far more extensible,
egalitarian, economical, secure, and resistant to centralized
pressures related both to site naming identifiers and the means of
network address mapping.
So here's my specific suggestion. If you're so inclined, and you
operate a Web site, please consider placing a publicly-readable plain
text file at the root of your site, named:
{NETWORKINFO}.txt
containing the appropriate data for your site, modeled after my
example file as noted above. Be sure to list your domain name, all
name servers, and at least the technical contact email address.
Consider this as a first tiny step toward freeing your site from
central control -- more a demonstration of potential interest than
anything else at this stage, but still a potentially useful exercise.
I strongly recommend making this address info page discoverable by
search engines. In my own case, I've created a visible, home page
"Net Address Info" link to the file, but sitemaps and other mechanisms
can also be used to assure that search engines will find your
{NETWORKINFO}.txt file. Try to keep the file updated with any changes
to your name servers or associated data.
If you want to drop me a line via email when you create such a file
for your site, that would be appreciated.
Just a tiny experimental step. Only the merest initial flicker
against the darkness, as we try to make the Internet better for
everyone, not only the privileged few.
After all, it's always darkest before the dawn. Even on the Internet.
Thanks.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com)
http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): http://www.pfir.org
Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance):
http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz