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, and who controls them, but most TLDs have their 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://web.archive.org/web/20260829204913/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 most TLDs created with this script.

  • Tom@lemmy.worldEnglish
    92·
    1 day 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
      5·
      1 day 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
        61·
        1 day 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

        • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipOPEnglish
          3·
          1 day ago

          Why would they use a TLD that isn’t recognized by most DNS providers for e.g. their email services?

          People generally want their email addresses to be reachable. They don’t just use it for super secret activism.

          • Tom@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            20 hours 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

            edit to your sneaky 8pm edit, which was:

            People generally want their email addresses to be reachable. They don’t just use it for super secret activism.

            well, they don’t have a usable domain now and they can’t get one either because icann will just block it. what do you want me to do about it? take over icann?

            these are their email options:

            1. use an email address without a domain (e.g. [email protected])
            2. use gmail
            3. use a domain in an alternative namespace so at least people using a domain name server capable of resolving the aforementioned alternative namespace can address the user by domain (e.g. [email protected])

            thanks for the sneaky 12:26am downvotes by the way, that really makes me want to help autistici with their issues, or you with yours.

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

            • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 day ago

              We need for Trump et all¹ to make some larger mistakes and do some really stupid things that cause a significant percentage of people to seek alternative ways of access, i.e. enough stupid shit to cause people to set up alternate root DNS systems.

              Of course, people with the capacity to do that are like Google et all, who - in that specific example - have set up 8.8.8.8 (etc) and currently seem to be acting pretty decently, but who knows how long that would last, and if a real battle of DNS started up, you’d want stuff hosted by people in other countries anyway, soooo…

              But it seems like we’re very far out from that war.

              ¹ i.e. the fascists