I often admire Cringely’s posts, but not so much this one, in which he channels a proposal for replacing DNS:

Domain dispute resolution would be rapid: one week for evidence presentation, 24 hours to decide, and 24 hours for appeals. At which point the Inet DNS system would block the loser. Domain transfers would be fast and low cost. All domain activity would operate through Inet, not be farmed out to resellers, since the system is too important, and has proved to be difficult to police on the Internet. Inet domain holders would be expected to maintain control over the content of their users on sites with Inet domain registrations. Repeated failures to rapidly do so would result in the temporary or permanent loss of their Inet domain.

Just Say No: David Harrison wants to replace your Internet. I, Cringely, February 22, 2007

So, let’s see: wait until the owner of a domain is on a road trip, claim he’s a squatter, run through this kangaroo court’s process, and by the time he’s back, he’s got no domain, because he didn’t respond in 24 hours.

And it keeps getting better:

Inet DNS registrants would have a real name, address, and contact details (not a PO Box), and any communication from the Inet DNS system to the named registrar must be answered within 24 hours or the registration would be terminated. Inet DNS calls would route the user’s browser requests to websites operating on the Internet. Duplicate sites would not need to be produced. The Inet registration procedure would permit an Inet domain to match an Internet domain, or to be automatically translated to a deep-linked Internet URL.

As one of Cringely’s commenters noted, many people depend on PO Boxes because they have obscure rural addresses, or they travel a lot and don’t want to advertise their absence to burglars by mail building up in a box at the house. Not to mention how, exactly, are you going to ensure that all those contact details are real?

And maybe the best part is that this pseudo DNS wouldn’t do anything to stop spam, which spammers would just send directly to IP addresses, as they often already do anyway.

But wait, there’s the part about all pornography would have to be available only through a .XXX domain. How long before all inappropriate political speech gets its own domain? Or religious? Or…?

The key phrase is “difficult to police”. Policing is only easy in a police state. Just say no to this kind of centralized net fascism.

-jsq