At an ICANN meeting in Europe, the limits of western consensus
From annoying climate activists to Palestinian flags, when everyone seemingly agrees that a voice should be censored, the moment has arrived to defend speech.
Wrong Amazon: The organization responsible for handing the .amazon TLD to Bezosian monopolists rather than forestry activists meets later this month in Hamburg. The group's power may be on the wane.
When the decision makers at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meet up the road from me in northern Germany later this month, lots of topics will be on the agenda, from the ways in which private companies handle top-level domains (TLDs -- think .net or .com) to the role of the technical community in determining how the global Domain Name System (DNS) works.
One thing that will not be discussed in serious circles, however, is the idea of reworking the entire TLD system to use a more decentralized approach.
That's where Handshake supporters excel.
Unlike the ICANN system, which allows a few centrally controlled DNS servers to determine how numerical IP addresses are translated to and from human-readable web addresses, the Handshake system is decentralized and based on a blockchain system, preventing censorship by states or other powerful entities.
It's a good way to do an end run around an increasingly congealed western consensus, which has resulted in unironic claims that banning Russian government-funded media sites while continuing to support equivalent Anglosphere government outlets like Voice of America, the BBC and Radio Liberty is somehow evenhanded.
Conversely, decentralized namespace resolution like Handshake can be useful for antiwar voices in Russia, where censorship is similarly rampant. (Citizen Lab found a thirtyfold increase in censorship by Moscow after the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with much of it directed against those who wished to speak out against the war.)
In both the East and the West, people need any method available to get around suppression, from ag gag laws to the use of ubiquitous "this domain has been seized" messages when governments shut down web hosting services they don't like.
Such seizures -- to which systems like Handshake can be a partial solution -- are almost always framed as working against cybercriminals, but they can also be just as easily used against hosts and middlemen for sites like WikiLeaks, which revealed U.S. war crimes in 2010. Similar problems can exist within the global payments system: Shortly after its revelations, WikiLeaks had its donation infrastructure targeted by American policymakers.
2010, of course, may feel like a long time ago. But with even supposedly soft-and-fuzzy European governments increasingly policing activists' speech on topics like the climate emergency and Palestinian independence, and with the supposedly pro-union American president blocking labor actions, it's abundantly obvious to most people who are paying attention that current elites everywhere have a strong interest in muting dissent, and that alternative methods of disseminating information can't arrive soon enough.
That's especially clear when it comes to ICANN, which has shown itself in recent years to be hideously corrupt. A botched attempt by the organization to sell off management rights for the entire .org TLD to a private equity firm failed only after activists put up a stink. More "successful" -- if that can be considered the right word -- was a move to hand the .amazon TLD not to the community of South American activists fighting for the eponymous rainforest, but to Jeff Bezos. Bezos won that fight.
Undertakings like Handshake can have a science fair feel to them, but there's already some real support of the system: VPN servers like NextDNS already offer handshake support, and some browser development teams are considering adding support as well. And unlike earlier attempts at decentralized namespace resolution, Handshake works with the existing DNS setup as a bridge, rather than trying to immediately replace it entirely.
Whether Handshake really takes off could, ironically, come down to how hamfisted governments and corporations get in their efforts to control information. The more corruption and censorship we face, the more people will be driven into the arms of systems like Handshake.
With that in mind, a part of me hopes that this admirable system, designed by commendable people, will have a reason to fail for lack of a market. We'll see.
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Selected links from this piece:
» What are Handshake (HNS) domains, and how do they work?
» EU officials defend move to ban RT and Sputnik amid censorship claims
» Russia’s Online Censorship Has Soared 30-Fold During Ukraine War
» Ag-Gag Laws: What Are They and Which States Still Have Them?
» IRS confirms takedown of bulletproof hosting provider Lolek
» Europe cracks down after rise in 'direct action' climate protests
» Waving Palestinian flag may be a criminal offence, Braverman tells police
» Biden signs bill to block U.S. railroad strike
» Amazon wins ‘.amazon’ domain name
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» Why Dutch Children Are The Happiest In The World
» I ranked 50 cities by government transparency. Philly came in last.
» Growth in the time of parking craters
» UK May Block Assange’s Attendance at Appeal to European Court of Human Rights
Image by Antonio Campoy - Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53125238