Was reading ZDNet's article by Larry Seltzer: A new, secure and free Internet… Dream on. Larry Seltzer wrote:
Bruce Schneier thinks we (engineers) should re-engineer the Internet to make it harder for governments to conduct surveillance. This is just silly. If we aren't willing to re-engineer it to stop criminals we sure won't do so to stop governments
Reader greywolf3 made an interesting comment on how Internet reboot could be achieved:
A new "Enternet" based on a new protocol TCP/EP with new services such as DES domain entity service to replace DNS etc. is perhaps the only way to root out all the criminals as well as all governments. None of the current Internet or protocols were designed with security in mind it just wasn't even thought of back then. Call it an Internet reset.
From a philosophical view, if we really want to have a different Internet, it should be an Open Source distributed P2P (peer-to-peer) system, like Open Source P2P money system Bitcoin.
That would mean most of the domain name selling and administration business would have to be sacrificed. Domain names would be like any other form of intellectual property - you wrote it down - it's your's (of course if it's not violating someone else's rights, identity, etc.) After claiming ownership, user would specify server address and it's done! That would also prevent bad things from happening, like DNS poisoning.
It would be an interesting task to create a system where people could exchange domain names and define rules of a life of a domain name. Perhaps automatically author would get ownership for some limited time (e.g. 5 years), and then if that domain would remain active, its ownership would be extended automatically. Otherwise author of the domain name could manually inform the system that he still wants to keep that name reserved. If that would not happen, domain name would become Public Domain and any other user could claim it.
And of course there would be a limit of how many domain names one could claim in a period of time - mass resellers will go out of business, no body will mourn though 😀
Following Bitcoin's model, every Internet user would have full copy of the Internet structure - it would be impossible for any government to control it, spy on it or take it down. I can just imagine how it would grow organically - would be a very interesting process!
Larry Seltzer wrote:
I'm really quite amazed at how ridiculous an idea this is. I imagine it felt good to write, but let's think through the implications.
- The new, secure and free Internet would probably have to be incompatible with the old one. Making it compatible would, if nothing else, increase the complexity of it to the point of compromising the security. Better that it's simple.
- There could be gateways between the new and old Internets, but many types of content wouldn't necessarily be transferrable.
Not at all. With its distributed P2P structure this new "alternet" would not have to be somehow compatible with the Internet. It would use the "old" Internet just as one of the access avenues. If growth would be rapid, we could expect completely new wired networks and gateways to be established so users could connect directly. Businesses that would see a good potential, would drive this innovation.
But... even if Internet will not change, cryptocurrencies will create a fifth protocol layer powering the next generation of the Internet:
Suppose we had a QuickCoin, which cleared transactions nearly instantly, anonymously, and for infinitesimal mining fees. It could use the Bitcoin blockchain for security or for easy trading in and out. SMTP would demand QuickCoin to weed out spam. Routers would exchange QuickCoin to shut down DDoS attacks. Tor Gateways would demand Quickcoin to anonymously route traffic. Machines would bypass centralized DNS and OAuth servers, using Coins to establish ownership.
Why stop at one Coin? Let’s posit a dozen new Appcoins. Using application-specific coins rewards the open-source developers with a pre-mined quantity. A TorCoin can be paid to its developers and gateways and by Tor users, achieving consensus via proof-of-bandwidth. We can allocate any scarce network resource this way – i.e., BoxCoin for Storage, CacheCoin for Caching, etc. ~The Fifth Protocol by Naval Ravikant/Startup Boy