[4243] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Using crypto to solve a part of the DNS/TM mess
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (bram)
Sun Feb 28 14:09:01 1999
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 16:34:27 -0800 (PST)
From: bram <bram@gawth.com>
To: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@law.miami.edu>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net, coderpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.990226223843.11977G-100000@boxster>
On Fri, 26 Feb 1999, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
> As some of you may know, I'm involved in a little brawl about domain
> names (details at http://www.law.miami.edu/~amf).
>
> It would be really useful to have a cryptographic solution to a part of
> the problem.
Unfortunately, the problems of domain names are really ones of authority,
and the best cryptography can really do is make sure that a reasonable set
of rules are enforced smoothly, it can't fix the rules.
The exception is that there might be a way of using technology to destroy
any sort of naming authority. There are various schemes by which this
could be done, although they all involve sacrificing human readability,
and there are various ways they could be hacked on top of dn. WIPO might
get really mad about screwing around with 'their' domain name system, but
as long as all the goofing around was done beneath a single top-level
domain which noone was ever going to use, it might be possible to win that
battle.
-Bram
