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> DNS costs money to use (which I argue is not suitable for all uses.) This kind of thinking is a trap that I see many people fall into. Domains cost money bec

> DNS costs money to use (which I argue is not suitable for all uses.) This kind of thinking is a trap that I see many people fall into. Domains cost money because they have to cost money. Human-friendly names are a scarce resource (there can only be one google.com and one @johnsmith). They have value, and the market tends to reach equilibrium. If a scarce resource costs (or is given away for) less than some people are willing to pay for it, speculators will grab it and resell it for the "right" price. Free domains for everybody actually means free domains for an enterprising businessman who grabs all of them with a simple Python script in 24 hours, and then resells them for $10 a pop. We already see that with normal DNS, short and memorable domain names go for astronomical amounts, but because every registration costs money, registering more unusual domain names if you don't actually have a need for them is not a profitable strategy, and so good enough names can still be registered somewhat cheaply. You need to increase prices to make speculation unprofitable while still remaining affordable to end users. It's a balancing act. If you don't create the barrier to entry yourself, the barrier to entry will be created for you, and not in a way you like or can control. Such a barrier doesn't have to be monetary, it can be (difficult) proof of work, centralized identity verification and abuse prevention policies, legal consequences for scalping, invitation / vouching requirements etc, but a barrier always exists, whether created by the system developers or the free market. This only applies at large scales of course, if your system is used by 10 people and all of them trust each other, "grab any name you want for free" is totally fine.

RicoElectrico 3y ago
Having a programmer understand the economic and societal background when they create a new project seems to be a bold assumption. Obviously tech can solve everything, right?
- test6554 3y ago
  I'm still waiting for the OAuth-based online US government ID for all citizens that lets us sign up for utilities, apply for colleges and loans, set up bank accounts, etc. instead of entering social security numbers everywhere. When is that coming?
- apples_oranges 3y ago
  The reasons parent posted are just made up "facts" that fit and tell a story that sounds right. Assuming programmers, who tend to be on the more intelligent side, reject it because they don't understand faulty reasoning is a faulty assumption itself..
  - Uptrenda 3y ago
    Comments like this are unhelpful and just read like an attempt to punch-down on someone. If you think that something doesn't make sense then you must be able to list and describe what's wrong. Or do you expect people to be able to read your mind when you post something like this? The vagueness makes it sound as if you have a point but if you do it's not included in your post.
- Uptrenda 3y ago
  [x] Condescending [x] Pretentious How could someone as lowly as a mere programmer possibly understand the complexity of how things cost money and their impact on participation? Sounds to me like I should have sought your esteemed council before making this project to save myself the embarrassment. In future I will make sure to consult you before I do something.
icedchai 3y ago
In the early days of the Internet, domains were free. They also took weeks to register.
- miki123211 3y ago
  Which just proves my point. The barrier to entry doesn't have to be monetary, a competent human being individually checking each application works just as well. There's also the point about scale, if your network is small and you trust your users, which was the case on the old internet, you can get away with a system that assumes no speculators.
hnbad 3y ago
> Domains cost money because they have to cost money. That's not entirely true. They cost money because they're market commodities and thus have market value. Making them cost non-trivial amounts of money to register is a way to de-incentivize scalping by reducing the profit margin but it's mostly done because it enables registries to pocket the premium that would otherwise go the the scalpers (aka "squatters"). Of course it would be entirely possible to devise a system that treats them less as a commodity or enforces usage-based rights but to do so in a less rigid and mindless way than "no activity in N cycles equals forfeiture" (like Twitter and Google have done or announced their intent to do before) is hard and doesn't play well with pretending to be a neutral actor enabling a free marketplace of ideas.
- ahepp 3y ago
  One big problem I see with this, is it sounds like you're proposing we dramatically expand the scope of registrar duties while also proposing we stop paying them. Where are they going to get the money to fund their nuanced and mindful enforcement of usage based rights? Is a team of legal specialists going to review domain applications for less than $15/y? It sounds like your concern is that private companies are making a lot of rent off public goods. I could have an incorrect understanding of this, but isn't it all run by ICANN at the end of the day? A solution might be to make sure the rent captured on domains goes back into funding public goods. Like a digital land value tax.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    I'm not talking about changing anything. I'm saying the registrar system is set up this way. It's never easy to completely rearchitect a system once it is already in place and well-established. I'm simply arguing that the way it works isn't a law of nature but a consequence of the underlying ideology and economic system.
    - ahepp 3y ago
      The glaring hole in the alternative you proposed has nothing to do with the existing system being well established.
Uptrenda 3y ago
I know this is HN but not everything needs to be monetized. There is such a thing as doing something because you want to. People write open source software largely because they want to and if it helps them they might as well let others use it too. There's more than enough unused network resources on the Internet to make a free alternative to DNS. OpenNIC comes fairly close to this but still fails to provide a good registration system. >enterprising businessman who grabs all of them I'm mostly targeting short names that can be shared with people in place of IPs. So think about server lobbies where normally you might type in an IP to connect to a friends server. The current domain name system has popular TLDs but my design isn't based on fixed TLDs. The name can be anything and there's no 'most popular' TLD so name squatting isn't an issue. It may be an issue if this were to emerge more for apps and websites though.
- miki123211 3y ago
  > I know this is HN but not everything needs to be monetized. It's not whether something should be monetized, but rather about whether it inevitably will. It's not a question of "if", but "by whom", "when" and "how much". Either you do the monetizing, via crypto or otherwise, or you hide your head in the sand, pretend that the issue doesn't exist and let the scalpers get all the profits.

RicoElectrico 3y ago

Having a programmer understand the economic and societal background when they create a new project seems to be a bold assumption. Obviously tech can solve everything, right?

test6554 3y ago
I'm still waiting for the OAuth-based online US government ID for all citizens that lets us sign up for utilities, apply for colleges and loans, set up bank accounts, etc. instead of entering social security numbers everywhere. When is that coming?
apples_oranges 3y ago
The reasons parent posted are just made up "facts" that fit and tell a story that sounds right. Assuming programmers, who tend to be on the more intelligent side, reject it because they don't understand faulty reasoning is a faulty assumption itself..
- Uptrenda 3y ago
  Comments like this are unhelpful and just read like an attempt to punch-down on someone. If you think that something doesn't make sense then you must be able to list and describe what's wrong. Or do you expect people to be able to read your mind when you post something like this? The vagueness makes it sound as if you have a point but if you do it's not included in your post.
Uptrenda 3y ago
[x] Condescending [x] Pretentious How could someone as lowly as a mere programmer possibly understand the complexity of how things cost money and their impact on participation? Sounds to me like I should have sought your esteemed council before making this project to save myself the embarrassment. In future I will make sure to consult you before I do something.

icedchai 3y ago

In the early days of the Internet, domains were free. They also took weeks to register.

miki123211 3y ago
Which just proves my point. The barrier to entry doesn't have to be monetary, a competent human being individually checking each application works just as well. There's also the point about scale, if your network is small and you trust your users, which was the case on the old internet, you can get away with a system that assumes no speculators.

hnbad 3y ago

> Domains cost money because they have to cost money. That's not entirely true. They cost money because they're market commodities and thus have market value. Making them cost non-trivial amounts of money to register is a way to de-incentivize scalping by reducing the profit margin but it's mostly done because it enables registries to pocket the premium that would otherwise go the the scalpers (aka "squatters"). Of course it would be entirely possible to devise a system that treats them less as a commodity or enforces usage-based rights but to do so in a less rigid and mindless way than "no activity in N cycles equals forfeiture" (like Twitter and Google have done or announced their intent to do before) is hard and doesn't play well with pretending to be a neutral actor enabling a free marketplace of ideas.

ahepp 3y ago
One big problem I see with this, is it sounds like you're proposing we dramatically expand the scope of registrar duties while also proposing we stop paying them. Where are they going to get the money to fund their nuanced and mindful enforcement of usage based rights? Is a team of legal specialists going to review domain applications for less than $15/y? It sounds like your concern is that private companies are making a lot of rent off public goods. I could have an incorrect understanding of this, but isn't it all run by ICANN at the end of the day? A solution might be to make sure the rent captured on domains goes back into funding public goods. Like a digital land value tax.
- hnbad 3y ago
  I'm not talking about changing anything. I'm saying the registrar system is set up this way. It's never easy to completely rearchitect a system once it is already in place and well-established. I'm simply arguing that the way it works isn't a law of nature but a consequence of the underlying ideology and economic system.
  - ahepp 3y ago
    The glaring hole in the alternative you proposed has nothing to do with the existing system being well established.

Uptrenda 3y ago

I know this is HN but not everything needs to be monetized. There is such a thing as doing something because you want to. People write open source software largely because they want to and if it helps them they might as well let others use it too. There's more than enough unused network resources on the Internet to make a free alternative to DNS. OpenNIC comes fairly close to this but still fails to provide a good registration system. >enterprising businessman who grabs all of them I'm mostly targeting short names that can be shared with people in place of IPs. So think about server lobbies where normally you might type in an IP to connect to a friends server. The current domain name system has popular TLDs but my design isn't based on fixed TLDs. The name can be anything and there's no 'most popular' TLD so name squatting isn't an issue. It may be an issue if this were to emerge more for apps and websites though.

miki123211 3y ago
> I know this is HN but not everything needs to be monetized. It's not whether something should be monetized, but rather about whether it inevitably will. It's not a question of "if", but "by whom", "when" and "how much". Either you do the monetizing, via crypto or otherwise, or you hide your head in the sand, pretend that the issue doesn't exist and let the scalpers get all the profits.