Mastodawn

Aral Balkan Aug 5, 2017

OpenNIC: the unsung hero of the future?

So I’m ashamed to say that I’ve basically been ignorant of the fact that there’s been an alternate democratic/open/post-Capitalist domain name system operating since 2000. It’s called OpenNIC (https://www.opennic.org/) and – with a bit of design love and creative marketing – I don’t see why we couldn't get widespread support for it. It would be a huge step forward for decentralisation/individual sovereignty. https://mastodon.ar.al/media/upXlzzLil5JHFbxONJQ

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Matthew Skala Aug 11, 2017

@aral That's not the one (eDNS) founded by the same guy who founded the Tea Party, but I see no reason to think it's any less crankish.

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Aral Balkan Aug 13, 2017

@mattskala Not sure what you find “crankish” in a democratic, non-capitalist domain name system (or, inversely, what’s inherently acceptable about a commercially-owned-and-controlled system of identifiers for humanity which is what we have today with the mainstream implementation).

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Matthew Skala

@aral The idea that the domain name system should be a tool for political change at all, is a good start. I'd have the same opinion of a group that tried to popularize an "alternate" set of telephone numbers for political reasons, or an "alternate" set of units of measure to replace SI for political reasons (despite that SI itself started that way). Standards organizations are an inappropriate place to start trying to smash capitalism even if you think smashing capitalism is a worthy goal.