Why: so your site can’t be taken down by the USA.

At least one .org website that I know of has been shut down because the USA pressured the US organisation that controls the .org domain into doing so.

They could repeat this at will for quite a number of sites.

An immediate step to prevent this possibility, if you run a website, is to register a domain that is controled outside the US.

I have not found one article that just lists them all, but each of the TLDs has its own wikipedia article, e.g. .org (US controled), .eu (not US controled, yay) etc.

Ultimately ICANN controls all of this, and that’s a US orga too, and Trump could bully them into doing shit, too. But the people who know about these things don’t seem to think that’s a likely threat right now. Also ICANN seems to defer a lot of tasks to exactly these TLD orgas. After all the internet still is (somewhat) decentralized.

Context

https://www.inventati.org/campaign/press

Further reading

https://blog.apnic.net/2023/01/13/who-controls-the-internet/
https://netmeister.org/blog/tlds.html

[List of all TLDs](https://uguu.libre.moe/files/vaREJnrk.txt)

Created with this script:

#!/bin/sh  

max=26  
curl https://www.internic.net/domain/root.zone | \  
awk '{if ($4 == "NS") { print $1;}}'| sort -u | \  
while read tld; do  
    [ "${#tld}" -lt 2 ] && continue  
    tld=".${tld%.}"  
    pre="$tld"  
    while [ "${#pre}" -lt "$max" ]; do pre="$pre "; done  
    echo "$pre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$tld"  
done
  • Tom@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    20 days ago

    (This comment is a draft and, as such, still subject to change):

    But the people who know about these things don’t seem to think that’s a likely threat right now.

    Nonetheless I would advise to be prepared in case trump suddenly decrees that .gl is now .us or that there’s a 4 million percent tariff on using a .ca domain or some such foolishness. If one can suddenly declare the gulf of mexico to be the gulf of america or lake ontario to be lake america one can certainly put pressure on a single organisation to change whatever they feel like.

    As an internet user you can:

    • create a hosts and/or hosts.BAK file and make generous use of it [1]. Think of digital infrastructure you need to use everyday and/or in case of an emergency.

    • keep a list of functioning dns servers owned and operated by organizations that will likely roll back any nonsensical superimposed changes. Consider local, independent, non-US entities.

    • when push comes to shove, be prepared to use alternative namespaces such as the one operated by opennic [2]

    As an internet proprietor you can:

    • prepare yourself and your servers for such a scenario

    • register (and use) a domain in an alternative namespace

    • make users aware of alternative methods to reach you/your services

    As a network operator you can:

    • maintain awareness and ensure preparedness

    • maintain (auxiliary) digital infrastructure independently on non-US soil

    • support alternative namespaces

    • peer with sovereign non-US AS

    1. hosts (file) - wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file ↩︎

    2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNIC#OpenNIC_namespaces ↩︎

    • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipOPEnglish
      0·
      20 days ago

      when push comes to shove, be prepared to use alternative namespaces such as the one operated by opennic [1]

      I already do but autistici.org isn’t reachable through OpenNIC either. The explanation is, essentially, that they cannot edit existing entries from the lists they get from upstream (something about DNSSEC) and that they cannot legally hand out .org domains themselves.

      But yeah, I think autistici/inventati will evtl. use a TLD that isn’t under US control.

      In any case, we, i.e. the non-US parts of the world, will have to tackle these things evtl. because even if things get better in the USA, I don’t think they’re going to roll back to before the Patriot Act.

      1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNIC#OpenNIC_namespaces ↩︎

      • Tom@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        20 days ago

        I’m afraid the non-US parts of the world need to decentralize the internet sooner rather than later

        in the meantime autistici can register an .epic/.indy/.libre domain or help set up a new tld of their choosing in an alternative namespace

          • Tom@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            20 days ago

            because of what’s going on right now. because they can’t get a domain from any organization that’s under the auspices of icann

            edit: the alternative is for autistici to go nameless and for autistici users to type in an ip address instead of https://www.autistici.$TLD

            to make the web resistant to such censorship we need to have service providers that accept and support alternative namespaces; the alternative to that is for service providers to just stop accepting the authority of the us government and organizations such as icann and stop accepting routes and dns records from entities that do[1] and create their own routing tables and dns records, thus effectively ending the inter part of the internet

            1. accept the authority of the us government and organizations such as icann ↩︎

              • Tom@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                19 days ago

                you could, yes

                which domain name servers resolve .eth and .sol domains? The ones I use don’t, unfortunately