US Government censors the web - 84.000 domains blocked this time

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

USA gov censorship in action again, blocking innocent domains:

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-shuts-down-84000-websites-by-mistake-110216/

The US Government has yet again shuttered several domain names this week. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. What they failed to mention, however, is that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes.

[Nefario]

Bad news.

[kiba]

They're getting negative attention. WE NEED MOAR PRESSURE!

[Timo Y]

DNS blocking is still relatively harmless.  Nobody is forced to use the "official" DNS.

When they start blocking IP addresses and ports, however, then it will start to become really scary.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

When they start blocking IP addresses and ports, however, then it will start to become really scary.

They can't block IP addresses outside of their jurisdiction.
DNS is the only part left of the internet that is not decentralized. They are using this weakness.

[ribuck]

DNS is the only part left of the internet that is not decentralized.

.com is not controlled by the US government, but .org is

[imanikin]

Help is on the way:

http://dot-p2p.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Help is on the way:
http://dot-p2p.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Nothing new, people are working on this forum on Bitcoin - based implementation of DNS:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0

[caveden]

They can't block IP addresses outside of their jurisdiction.

They can block IPs outside of their jurisdiction for those who live inside their jurisdiction, just like the Great Firewall.

[caveden]

.com is not controlled by the US government, but .org is

Really? I thought both were. Under which jurisdiction are .com domains then?

[Vasiliev]

.com and .net are both VeriSign, and the TLDs that the USGov seizes sites on. .org is operated by the Public Interest Registry.

[caveden]

Ok, that means they cannot easily block just like they did with these 84.000 domains... but VerySign itself is under US jurisdiction, isn't it?

[Vasiliev]

American company.

The seized FreeDNS domain was moooo.com (or similar, forget # of o)

[ribuck]

.com is not controlled by the US government, but .org is

Really? I thought both were. Under which jurisdiction are .com domains then?

The source for my comment was the summary at the top of the following story, but maybe it's wrong:
"US Dept. of Justice, ICE Still Seizing Domains"

[Anonymous]

.fuu

[theymos]

ICANN itself is located in the US, as is Verisign (.com, .net) and PIR (.org).

I think ICANN will try to do something about this eventually. Once countries on the Governmental Advisory Committee become angry/jealous over the US's ability to take down random websites, ICANN will need to act.

[caveden]

I just hope it doesn't act given all other countries the same power...

[Nefario]

What is stopping people inventing their own subdomain, like .foo for example?

[caveden]

It's ICANN who controls the root level domains, as far as I know. So, on the current architecture, only them could attribute .foo to some domain name authority.

Now, nothing prevents people to invent other domain name systems, that are not under ICANN control, like the .p2p initiative. But that would only work after many DNS servers (or browsers) learn how to use these new DNS systems.
That could lead to some name conflicts, if more than one system define the same root level and attribute it to different authorities.