Radical-safest TLDs in 2014
Well, since we had a nice thread about radical-safest TLDs in 2007, why not ask the same question about present day? Now, I know .onion is the "TLD of choice" of sorts, but if hypothetically I were to register a domain for a project that would help people circumvent Internet censorship and monitoring (so, potentially interesting for the copyright enforcing LEAs too), which TLD should I choose for a "clearternet" version of the website? Please note: I'm not asking about *hosting*, just mere TLD for the domain. -- Pozdr rysiek
I have heard a very exciting rumour that Tor may become integrated into Firefox in the near future, so that one of the most widely used browsers in the world will be able to access .onion addresses out of the box. If this is true it'll shake up the TLD market like nothing else ever has, and be a big coup for Firefox; the browser you use to access new media sources like the next popcorn time, or the next social streaming service, who'd be more inclined to build backends on .onions and resist copylobbyists. On 05/10/14 10:07, rysiek wrote:
Well,
since we had a nice thread about radical-safest TLDs in 2007, why not ask the same question about present day?
Now, I know .onion is the "TLD of choice" of sorts, but if hypothetically I were to register a domain for a project that would help people circumvent Internet censorship and monitoring (so, potentially interesting for the copyright enforcing LEAs too), which TLD should I choose for a "clearternet" version of the website?
Please note: I'm not asking about *hosting*, just mere TLD for the domain.
-- Twitter: @onetruecathal, @formabiolabs Phone: +353876363185 Blog: http://indiebiotech.com miniLock.io: JjmYYngs7akLZUjkvFkuYdsZ3PyPHSZRBKNm6qTYKZfAM
On Sun, Oct 05, 2014 at 10:58:16AM +0100, Cathal Garvey wrote:
I have heard a very exciting rumour that Tor may become integrated into Firefox in the near future, so that one of the most widely used browsers in the world will be able to access .onion addresses out of the box.
actually it is already, and all the other browsers as well. you just need to enable name resolution for tor in torrc: VirtualAddrNetwork 127.13.0.0/10 AutomapHostsOnResolve 1 TransPort 9042 DNSPort 9153 a bit of iptables settings and setup unbound to route queries for .onion to the local tor proxy. with a bit of googling you can fill out the missing blanks... -- otr fp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/otr.txt
Dnia niedziela, 5 października 2014 13:28:52 stef pisze:
On Sun, Oct 05, 2014 at 10:58:16AM +0100, Cathal Garvey wrote:
I have heard a very exciting rumour that Tor may become integrated into Firefox in the near future, so that one of the most widely used browsers in the world will be able to access .onion addresses out of the box.
actually it is already, and all the other browsers as well. you just need to enable name resolution for tor in torrc:
Good to know. Still, the question was about non-onion TLDs. ;) -- Pozdr rysiek
Rysiek, Can we further reduce ambiguity by reducing the set to those TLDs recognized by ICANN? I don't think you can 'rely' on any of them, to coderman's point. Your best bet is to enumerate the list of TLD delegated authoritative servers, then recursively send legal threats to each. The one who demonstrates the most impressive apathy may be your winner :) Of course, you may want to follow the concept of pitting two noncooperative countries against each other. If the threat to your name isnt specifically tied to a subset of all jurisdictions.. You might have a problem. You might, then, establish a protocol. The hash of the website CNN.com's contents, for instance, may serve as a backup domain. Realistically its really down to finding a cool registrar & TLD pair. TBP may be your best example here. As a final note: if you're worried about these kinds of problems you probably shouldn't be using clearnet. Travis On Oct 5, 2014 6:50 PM, "coderman" <coderman@gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/5/14, rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> wrote:
... which TLD should I choose for a "clearternet" version of the website?
for present day, "clearnet" version, winner is .bit / namecoin.
I'd say national TLD's are to be avoided, if they're known to be anti-whateveritisyou'redoing. ".com" is kinda difficult given the US just claims it. Other than that I don't think anyone cares. The idea is that you're easy to find, just focus on that. Robustness... Onion and bit are resilient, more so than a bare IP address, so that's worth it /if you're expecting domain name troubles/. .io is hip right now, but it's like 35usd instead of ~10usd, and it feels icky-hip not cool-hip. Can't wait till we get 1-N domain names; where a domain name is like a tag and up/downvotes and a web-of-trust regulate ordering. Democratic, distributed, semi-/inconsistent in a good way. If you pin an identity, use a certificate! Way better to use identities that way anyway. Have governments certify that a certain entity (cryptographic entity) is the natural or legal person it claims to be, allowing any government to do that. Totally different ecosystem though. That's life :/
Can we further reduce ambiguity by reducing the set to those TLDs recognized by ICANN?
Isn't it more useful to reduce the set to TLDs that the "average user" can connect to? That's why I shared the rumours about .onion in Firefox: who cares what ICANN thinks, if a large enough userbase can access it OOTB without configuration? By contrast, .onion *today*, along with .i2p and .bit, are all configuration-heavy, meaning virtually nobody will actually access or use them unless they're already completely dedicated customers. The Silk Road managed to pull people in because it was essentially the only place to buy drugs "safely" online (along with plenty of other reprehensible things), but that's a completely exceptional case. I'm thinking of benign web services that enrich the world in some way, but suffer censorship or legal assault because they disturb the status-quo. The next start-up that MPAA want to crush, or the next whistleblowing site, or the next transborder social network. Those people will need TLDs they can rely on. If .onion goes surprisingly mainstream in the near future, that'd be very powerful. Of course, .onion will remain slow as sin, but for those websites they can use .onion with 304 redirects to non-onion TLDs for each visitor; as their clearnet TLDs get shut down they can just register new ones and 304 redirect to them on the fly for each new visitor; whack-a-mole on a grand scale, a total losing battle for the censors. The critical bit is that there's one canonical URL for new visitors that will always lead to service. On 06/10/14 21:00, Travis Biehn wrote:
Rysiek, Can we further reduce ambiguity by reducing the set to those TLDs recognized by ICANN?
I don't think you can 'rely' on any of them, to coderman's point.
Your best bet is to enumerate the list of TLD delegated authoritative servers, then recursively send legal threats to each.
The one who demonstrates the most impressive apathy may be your winner :)
Of course, you may want to follow the concept of pitting two noncooperative countries against each other. If the threat to your name isnt specifically tied to a subset of all jurisdictions.. You might have a problem.
You might, then, establish a protocol. The hash of the website CNN.com's contents, for instance, may serve as a backup domain.
Realistically its really down to finding a cool registrar & TLD pair. TBP may be your best example here.
As a final note: if you're worried about these kinds of problems you probably shouldn't be using clearnet.
Travis On Oct 5, 2014 6:50 PM, "coderman" <coderman@gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/5/14, rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> wrote:
... which TLD should I choose for a "clearternet" version of the website?
for present day, "clearnet" version, winner is .bit / namecoin.
-- Twitter: @onetruecathal, @formabiolabs Phone: +353876363185 Blog: http://indiebiotech.com miniLock.io: JjmYYngs7akLZUjkvFkuYdsZ3PyPHSZRBKNm6qTYKZfAM
participants (6)
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Cathal Garvey -
coderman -
Lodewijk andré de la porte -
rysiek -
stef -
Travis Biehn