[p2p-research] Google gets into the DNS business

[Ted Smith]

On Sun, 2009-12-06 at 20:09 -0500, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> M. Fioretti wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 06, 2009 10:43:54 AM -0500, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> > 
> >> This may reflect a deeper shift in our society. For most people, the
> >> Google corporation is now effectively the de-facto government that
> >> structures their lives online. So, how can we make Google a good
> >> government? :-)
> > 
> > With all respect, this is the wrong question. The question is "how can
> > we make peple realize that a) there's no need for such a government,
> > b) it's in everybody's interest to take management of their
> > communications in their own hands?"
> > 
> >> Well, one could also put a willingness to use Google for convenience
> >> or free-of-direct cost down to "digital fatalism" in just assuming
> >> you have no privacy online.
> > 
> > What I see is lots of people going "I'd rather be tortured than learn
> > how to choose and configure software, so I'll fatalistically go for
> > total loss of privacy here and now, never mind 2019"
> > 
> >> Of course, another issue is that digital evidence is fairly trivial
> >> to fabricate.
> > 
> > Yes, this is a serious problem, but not really the one we started
> > from, is it?
> > 
> > Even the discourse about limiting corporation rights (which is really
> > interesting for me, thanks Michel for the link!)... I am not sure how
> > relevant it is to this other one. If it's already possible (at the
> > software level, physical infrastructure is another issue) to
> > communicate without multinationals, why discuss how they should be
> > regulated, in this context at least? I mean, they should be regulated
> > for a lot of reasons, but having reliable and easy to use email is
> > definitely not one of them.
> 
> Those are good points, but the fact is, multinationals lay the fiber cables 
> under the sea, launch the satellites, repair the cables to people's homes, 
> supply the power to the equipment, train the operators, and so on. So, 
> unless we talk about a radical restructuring of the economy (which I've been 
> happy to talk about) we are stuck with Google (and corporate friends) as the 
> de-facto government. Which is another way of saying "fascism" -- a binding 
> together of business and government. So, how can we have a "better" fascist 
> state using P2P if that's what almost everyone has chosen? :-)

I would rather spend time creating p2p infrastructure then trying to
reform fascist infrastructure.

Probably, a good thing to look into is 802.11s[1] (mesh networking), and
ways to easily and cheaply deploy that. Some people have already created
very wide-reaching wireless networks, such as the Athens Wireless
Metropolitan Network[2]. 

The next thing that would be necessary is devising ways of long-range
transmission (high-frequency radio? LEO DIY comsat stuff?) and p2p
variants of protocols which are now hierarchical, such as DNS and TLS.

This seems doable, although very difficult. It remains to be seen if the
amount of will that is necessary for these efforts to succeed can be
mustered.


[1] <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/IEEE_802.11s>
[2]
<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan_Network>



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