[dns-operations] blockchain DNS

[John R Levine]

>>> Would you think blockchain will change DNS world with uncentered
>>> way in future?
>>
>> No.  They don't scale, and they don't solve any real world problems.
>
> Well, takedowns (as in the Sci-Hub case) are certainly a real-world
> problem. We may discuss the wisdom of trying to solve a political
> problem with a technical solution, but we cannot deny there is a
> problem.

For every Sci-Hub, there are a dozen Daily Stormers and a thousand fake 
phish banks, fake "Canadian" pharmacies, and other malicious sites.  The 
history of name registries that don't deal with illegal activities is, to 
put it mildly, unpleasant.  If you haven't seen any of them, that's not a 
coincidence, other networks tend not to accept their traffic.

For the specific issue of Sci-Hub, academics claim they want open access 
to their papers, at least in developing countries, but they send those 
papers to publishers like Elsevier who charge $30 a peek.  They need to 
make up their minds.  And while the technology of an online open access 
journal is straightforward, nobody's figured out how to do for free the 
useful part of what Elsevier does, gatekeepers and reviewers who find the 
publication-worthy stuff in the mountain of garbage.

These are real problems but I don't see any way blockchains wouldn't make 
them worse.  They don't solve real world problems.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
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