ICANN's monopoly has always been a theoretical problem, but it's only recently proven itself an actual problem. For all of Google and Silicon Valley's kvetching about "Net Neutrality" against cable companies lately, the greatest threat comes not from Comcast and other "last mile" utility providers but from the Root DNS servers which essentially operate as the Internet's "phone book."
DNS matches up human-readable addresses like dailystormer.com to computer-readable IP addresses like 148.80.88.88. ICANN is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization which outsources the task of selling the domain names to registrars like GoDaddy, NameCheap, Google, sovereign governments, and such. An emergent oligopoly now exists, centered on Silicon Valley and the Atlanticist deep state, which has now officially broken the Internet's gentleman's agreement that domain name provision is to be offered unless there's a court order confirming illegal activity.
First it was Anglin's fat joke at DailyStormer.com (now over at Iceland's DailyStormer.is address) which was deemed unworthy of being on the Internet. A few days later, the venerable Stormfront.com was also stolen by its registrar for being politically incorrect. Stolen. Both domains have been locked by the registrars so that neither Daily Stormer nor Stormfront can attempt to find an alternative provider, and there is no appeal or arbitration process. Even if you find these sites abhorrent, what this development portends for Net Neutrality is also abhorrent.
There need to be a solution, and it can't be political. The company which actually stole Anglin's domain name is Google herself, the corporation which invests more money in lobbying Washington than any other corporation on earth. The Electronic Frontier Foundation offered a limp-wristed objection, expressing concern about the precedent, but they lack the resources and are themselves compromised by powerful corporate and deep state pressures which preclude their saving the day. The solution must necessarily be technical.
It turns out that there are already several mature technical solutions which have been gathering dust on the workbench for several years. ISIS, pedophiles, contract killers, and similar comic book villains are content to take their business to the Dark Web. Up until now, those were pretty much the only targets of DNS censorship, so Namecoin and OpenNIC have languished because everybody was pretty much fine with the Internet's non-partisan phonebook. Up until now, the fact that the power of life and death on the Internet was under the control of less than a dozen servers controlled by less than a dozen corporate board member types was an uninteresting trivia fact, ...like the fact that Federal Express isn't actually "federal."
Now that these solutions are needful, the challenge becomes bridging the chasm between these solutions and the confusion and hassling for end users of implementing them. With a few hours of research, a person can figure out how to install a plugin which enables browsers to read alt.dns and namecoin addresses. One can figure out how to install the Tor Browser. One can figure out how to use one of numerous proxy services which allow people to view alt.dns websites without installing anything or learning anything. What's needful is a tool which automatically handles all of that complexity for the end user, so the alt.dns domains can be discovered and used by more people.
Hash Resolve is my attempt at a solution, one which makes typing in an alt.dns address almost as easy as typing in a regular address. It's a WordPress plugin which, when installed, checks the address bar for a domain name entered after the home address and a #. For instance, if you type, www.nfunity.org#www.tradworker.bit, a popup will appear with three big icons: one is a link to a proxy service where one can view the website. One is a link to a browser plugin which allows one to use .bit addresses. And one is a link to learn more about Namecoin.
It also works similarly for .onion addresses, with options adapted as appropriate for the top-level domain. In addition to this, it also relies on DNS SRV records of ICANN-approved websites to offer links (when available) to a site's .bit and .onion mirror domains. If somebody wishes to know what Fash Emporium's onion address is, one can type the site's regular address on any Hash Resolve website's address bar to find out. For instance, www.fashemporium.com#fashemporium.com serves up the following...
All you've got to do is drop your .bit and/or .onion addresses into your DNS settings:
Since Peername currently only supports HTTP (not HTTPS) and there's no architectural point in Tor hidden service SSL certificates, I went with the port of 80. An additional SRV port of 443 would be nice to have for alt.dns addresses once that issue's resolved.
This feature can be a huge benefit for people using the TOR Browser who would rather shop using the site's hidden service. Now they can easily find that address. Ideally, we can reach a point where the Tor Browser itself looks for that SRV record automatically and offers that option from within the browser's interface. My Nationalist Front, TradWorker, and Fash Emporium websites have all been designed to work completely and identically on either the regular web, the dark web, or with the .bit alt.dns address, a design pattern which minimizes how acutely registrar-level political censorship can interfere with our operations.
Ideally, .bit and other alt.dns domains would be automatically resolved by the major web browsers. Ideally this whole service will become obsolete because the browsers will take alt.dns seriously. I'm hopeful that Brave Browser, a scrappy underdog in the arena which doesn't answer to the Silicon Valley oligopoly, will pioneer these features. Unfortunately, they won't until the ecosystem has more demand and visibility than it currently does. Hopefully Hash Resolve can help with that problem and help make the Internet a more fair and free environment.
There's a lot of talk lately about the rise of #AltTech. But unless it relies on public key cryptography to guarantee privacy and permission, as blockchain services and onion-routing protocols do, it's not really #AltTech. It's just placing your trust in a different political actor who may or may not be compromised, corrupted, or defeated at some point in the future. Legal and political solutions will solve nothing, as Apple, Google, Facebook, and the other major tech players grew past the point where sovereign governments can control them or "bust them up" while everybody was distracted.
Untold hundreds of thousands of people have lost their popular Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts in the past year or so to the corporate censorship crackdown. Without warning or an appeals process, a large chunk of the American electorate who recently had a profound impact on mainstream electoral politics and committed no crime were systematically silenced. The chilling effect reverberates out even further, leading even the most mainstream conservative commentators to ask themselves if what they're saying could be interpreted the wrong way by the faceless and unaccountable Big Tech hydra which wields the power of life and death over ideas.
After a couple weeks to hopefully field some bug reports and issues, I'll attempt to polish it up for inclusion in the official WordPress repository so hosts will be able to very easily install the plugin. If it were to achieve widespread adoption, this plugin could dramatically reduce the impact of DNS-based political censorship attacks. With Hash Resolve, the Dark Web, cryptocurrency, smart contracts, and other exciting new tools under development or around the corner, we can move past this growing pain for both the AltRight and for the Internet itself and help pioneer a truly free Internet.
