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[Rouben <rouben AT rouben.net>]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 18:48 'smee <overthefalls AT opengroupware.ch> wrote:

Am I missing anything on the fact that opennic handling .bit domains actively hurts namecoins objectives <snip>

In a nutshell, some Namecoin community members don’t like the fact that OpenNIC DNS servers can be used to de-anonymize .bit domain (owners). Jeff linked to the following article that basically expanded on this claim:

https://namecoin.org/2018/09/24/how-centralized-inproxies-make-everyone-less-safe-case-study.html

That’s my understanding...

Rouben

On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 18:48 'smee <overthefalls AT opengroupware.ch> wrote:

That sums it up pretty well. I'm probably missing something still but
but I can't get past the fact that namecoin sees privacy and censorship
resistance as priorities (not for malware distributors but for people
who are being oppressed or censored) and it seems that opennic handling
.bit domains actually puts people at risk (legitimate activists and
malware distributors alike.)

Aside from that, I've had malware distributed to me from a domain
hosted on amazonaws, contacted them about it, and got absolutely no
help. So malware can come from anywhere and, in my opinion, these days,
often comes right from microsoft, google, apple, adobe, etc in the form
of ad/spyware.

Am I missing anything on the fact that opennic handling .bit domains
actively hurts namecoins objectives and doesn't do anything to foster
good will between the two communities, while at the same time might
actually be helping oppressive regimes spy on people who think their
traffic is safe? Sorry if that question sounds like I'm asserting my
view, just clarifying and making sure I'm not misunderstanding
something that could change my view...

On Thu, 2019-06-27 at 14:49 -0600, Jeff Taylor wrote:
> It's actually a little more complex than that.  From what I've been 
> hearing it sounds like some members of Namecoin appreciated the
> service 
> while others wanted to remain hidden.  There was also quite a bit of 
> controversy here on Opennic over the subject.  Because of the
> anonymous 
> nature of .bit domains with absolutely no connection to a real
> person, 
> coupled with opennic's distribution making it easy to use those
> domains, 
> there were a number of .bit domains being used to send malware and
> other 
> questionable content to other people's computers.
>
> This is where things got ugly...  We've had some long discussions,
> both 
> here on the mailing list and on IRC chat.  Basically this centers
> around 
> the idea that everyone wants opennic to freely resolve everything as 
> intended without any modifications.  However because of the .bit
> domains 
> being used to distribute malware they got picked up by Spamhaus and
> the 
> mail servers attached to the same IPs as opennic DNS resolvers were
> then 
> blacklisted.  We worked with Spamhaus to get a list of the domains
> they 
> found problems with, and that's when our own blacklist came to be. 
> But 
> this goes against the concept of opennic resolving domains without 
> interference.  There was no argument that it should not be
> Spamhaus's 
> place to police the internet, and their methods were essentially
> holding 
> some of our servers 'hostage' in an effort to force us to bend to
> their 
> will, but there was a lot of debate about whether or not we
> *should*.  
> The only compromise we could come to was that the decision should be 
> left up to the individual T2 operators, with a method of identifying 
> which servers were making use of the blacklist data to modify their
> results.
>
> And so here we are today.  What it came down to was that almost
> nobody 
> in opennic is actually using .bit domains, so a vote was called to
> see 
> if it was worth the effort to keep it around.
>
> Hope that faithfully summarizes the history?
>
>
>
> On 06/27/2019 02:16 AM, 'smee wrote:
> > I also read the list but have yet to contribute anything, and I
> > didn't
> > vote. This issue and how it came up opened my eyes to a few things.
> > On
> > the face of it, it seems obvious. They don't want opennic handling
> > .bit
> > domains and it seems to be of no benefit to opennic to continue
> > doing
> > so.
> > Being not that well versed in the subject, I decided to watch the
> > discussion and learn more, but from the discussion, those two facts
> > don't seem to have changed.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 2019-06-26 at 22:29 +0200, Al Beano wrote:
> > > Like many others, I'm also alive and reading the mailing list but
> > > didn't vote - mainly because I'm away from home and things were
> > > going
> > > in my favour anyway :-)
> > >
> > > Am 25. Juni 2019 17:48:17 MESZ, schrieb alejandro AT dnslibre.com.mx
> > > :
> > > > Thanks for the update Jeff.
> > > >
> > > > So only 15 people are active on opennic 😲
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > -----Mensaje original-----
> > > > De: discuss-request AT lists.opennicproject.org
> > > > <discuss-request AT lists.opennicproject.org> En nombre de Jeff
> > > > Taylor
> > > > Enviado el: martes, 25 de junio de 2019 09:29 a. m.
> > > > Para: OpenNIC discussion <discuss AT lists.opennicproject.org>
> > > > Asunto: Re: [opennic-discuss] Vote to keep or drop peering with
> > > > NameCoin
> > > >
> > > > With a final vote of 13 to 2, the vote has ended in favor of
> > > > dropping
> > > > namecoin from opennic.  I will be updating the glue zone today
> > > > to
> > > > remove .bit, and updating the root zone to drop references to
> > > > namecoin
> > > > and emercoin.  Thanks to everyone who cast their vote.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
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Rouben