[Cryptography] A naming and key distribution infrastructure for the Mesh

Phillip Hallam-Baker phill at hallambaker.com
Mon Sep 28 19:07:11 EDT 2020


On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 3:49 PM Christian Huitema <huitema at huitema.net>
wrote:

>
> On 9/28/2020 9:30 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 2:01 AM Peter Fairbrother <peter at tsto.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> ...
>
> I did not own zen.co.uk, but I now own tsto.co.uk - or at least
>> exclusively rent it from ICANN/Nominet/my registrar or whoever with a
>> sort-of guarantee that as long as I pay the rent I can't be evicted.
>>
>
> No, you don't own it. You rent it. That is the difference between a Mesh
> name and an ICANN name.
>
>
> Is that difference large enough for people to care? Peter own his domain
> name until he fails to pay the rent, or until someone sues him out of
> ownership. You own a mesh name until you lose control of the secret key
> that certifies ownership. I am not sure which of the two events has the
> highest probability. Domain name law suits do happen, but they are quite
> rare if the name is as obscure as tsto.co.uk. Is that more likely to
> happen than, say, a virus causing loss of the disk memory, or a physical
> failure of the backup media? Ransomware attacks show that people do lose
> their data quite often. In any case, both types of events are quite rare.
> Not sure that actual users bother
>
What percentage of Internet users own a domain? Certainly less than 1%.

$10/yr is not much for you or me but it is a lot for many people. Oh and
yes, they do lose their names constantly because they fail to pay the rent
on them. When I was at VRSN I would get a rando trying to get me to fix
their lost domain pretty much once a week and I didn't work for that
division.

$0.10 one time charge is much simpler, cheaper and fairer. It gives Alice
the power to choose his own destiny.
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