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Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

Terrible title (especially with the capitalisation), but very sound article.

On the technical side, I wonder if a new DNS system outside of US control wouldn't be a good thing. Presumably, the best DNS system would be decentralised in some fashion... This might lead to a difficult transition period, but the end result (an internet where domain names are basically uncensorable by any government) would be very desirable.

I wonder what that would look like.

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The bill doesn't rely on DNS and moving the DNS system outside of the USA wouldn't stop COICA from working.

COICA works by forcing American ISPs to block their users' access to a list of domains. It mandates 2 lists; one where ISPs won't be punished for blocking and a second list where ISPs are forced to block. It's very close to implementing what China has with their Great Firewall. It's censorship plain and simple.

So ISPs would reverse-lookup all IPs requested by their customers, mapped onto a list of banned domains or naked IPs?

Decentralized DNS discussion from last week: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1919169

i don't understand how you could decentralize DNS any further, somebody has to administer it

I do think this proposal could lead to dark net, where people have to remember ip addresses to get illegitimate content

You could do it just like SSL - have a set of "root servers" hosted in multiple countries. Each netizen an then decide which internet he wants to access and pick the right root servers (obviously preselected by default to include the most reputable ones).

> to include the most reputable ones

If they're known, they can be blocked.

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