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The goal is to build a naming system that is decentralized and therefore free and hard to take down.

> You might call DNS "P2P", since anybody can join the network and run their own resolver.

Single point of attack. They shut down your custom resolver, and they shut down your custom naming system. Also this proposal fails in terms of availability and resilience.

Also it's hierarchical P2P, so if you control the root servers, you control the naming system. It is decentralized only to aid availability and resilience.

> the average user doesn't even know it exists.

Those who do, understand that it can be controlled.

> Not happy with something? ICANN is a community.

I want free names for 10 websites. ICANN't get that without paying $7 * 10 per year. Some things are not worth lobbying for, because they are obviously not going to happen.

> Really really pissed about something? Free speech, courts, democracy.

Such a naming system would be outside the immediate control of governments, therefore democracy has nothing to do with it. Indeed, the idea is that you could use this in China and Chechnya too.

> Use a ccTLD. I hear .ly is cool.

This still uses DNS, and does not solve anything.

Edited to remove snark. I don't believe the protocol that you are describing exists. A quick survey of distributed systems papers and leader election strategies over the past 30 or so years says that a satisfactory completely distributed protocol may be impossible.

> Single point of attack. They shut down your custom resolver, and they shut down your custom naming system. Also this proposal fails in terms of availability and resilience.

Peer-to-peer networks are easy to overthrow completely even with a relatively small number of malicious nodes.

> Also it's hierarchical P2P, so if you control the root servers, you control the naming system. It is decentralized only to aid availability and resilience.

ICANN only controls delegation to TLDs.

> I want free names for 10 websites.

I want free beer.

> Such a naming system would be outside the immediate control of governments, therefore democracy has nothing to do with it.

In the real world people care about ownership disputes, protecting trademarks, accountability and other legal matters.

> This still uses DNS, and does not solve anything.

Actually, it does. DNS solves everything just fine.

I think you're missing the point here. The goal is not to create a mainstream replacement for DNS. Its to create an "alternative" naming system.

> I want free beer.

A p2p naming system would use free software and shared computing resources. There are numerous examples of both (GNU and BOINC/Gnutella/Bittorrent respectively.) So striving for a free naming system is not the same as striving for free beer.

> Peer-to-peer networks are easy to overthrow completely even with a relatively small number of malicious nodes.

Not if your p2p model uses a web of trust model like PGP. This is what the proposed model uses.

I don't agree with the proposed model, for what its worth. I think they should be looking at leveraging the work done on semantic free referencing at MIT, instead of the existing name to IP model.

(http://nms.csail.mit.edu/projects/sfr/)

My main interest in a decentralized DNS system is to make it easier to do business with countries when the US decides it wants to steal their oil, and creates sanctions You couldn't purchase .ly domains until we stopped bullying Libya in 2004. If we build decentralized systems outside of the reach of the government, maybe we can even build a world free of petty politics and corrupt governments (like our own). It's a pipe dream, but it's the best dream I've got.

4) #dnsissexy - the average user doesn't even know it exists.

it's amazing how many people i see who use google as their primary resolver, by only using the search function even if they're entering a url.

Maybe they are not doing the right thing, but at least they are trying to do _something_. I will always respect that over just complaining (not aimed specifically at you).

Doing useless stuff is actually worse than just complaining, because in addition to not accomplishing anything, it wastes resources that would have been better spent elsewhere.

Also, the phrase "we must do _something_" is often used by politicians to justify stupid laws or contracts that don't help to solve the intended problem, but sometimes make things even worse. That's quite a high price to pay for the publicity shows of certain people.

That's it not how things tend to work out in my experience. Resources are almost never limited in the way you describe. Even if they are you would have to know the same people would be doing something better, which most of the time you don't. You're far more likely to transition into something useful when people are actually engaged. At least whatever you're doing can be proven wrong by it not working. If you're only complaining, you can be right forever.

To me entrepreneurship, startups, community open source software etc. is all about trying new things. Sadly I far too rarely get the feeling that people share this view in forums like this one. Even though the barrier to entry of these types of project are so low, people still rather be "right" than join in or start their own.

Politics is very different from these types of projects, in that the amount of responsibility is far greater. I don't think it's a valid comparison.

tl;dr: http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Nature-of-Attitude---3-Types-o...