2006-10-26 Decentralize the Net

In Germany, I’m not allowed to link to AllOfMP3. In Denmark, it seems that a court has ordered a provider to prevent its users from visiting !AllOfMP3. And already people are offering alternate name servers. ¹

AllOfMP3

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This reminds me of the OpenNIC, one of the alternative DNS roots. Using a decentralized system would increase the potential for conflict, as suggested in the article on alternative DNS roots and discussed in RFC 2826. But it would also put an end to the endless haggling over “Internet Governance”, ICANN influence, and the kind of silly court decisions we hear about in Denmark.

OpenNIC

alternative DNS roots

It’s often hard to say when we should ban the tool used to commit a crime in addition to prosecuting the perpetuators of a crime. Nobody wants to go after the producers of knives, for example, even though people are killed with them. I’m not against banning small firearms, however, because it seems that the trade-off in this particular area is different than in the knife area.

I don’t support the old Music business model, which explains why I feel that the price we’re paying to support these old business models (including the removal of !AllOfMP3 from the name servers of a Danish ISP) is too high considering the benefits (which I believe to be very very small). Thus, in my opinion, we’re making a bad trade-off, and that’s why I think the court decision in Denmark is silly.

​#Web ​#Copyright ​#Music ​#AllOfMP3