Posted by Paul Garrin on October 09, 1996 at 14:58:12:
Liberation of NameSpace
Stalinistic limitations on the possibilities of network names
are a legacy of the cold war mentality which exists in the
current "domain" name system (DNS) of the internet.
The "organizational" nature of net names reflect the
bureaucratic, militaristic mindset of the centralized
agency, InterNIC, now operating as a private, highly
profitable monopoly called Network Solutions, Inc.
The very term "Domain" refers to "dominion" or "domination".
The net with supposedly no borders (another myth) is "organized" into
territories--"domains" and "zones of authority"--all
total contradictions to the nature of the network:
to dissolve all borders.
The name.space intitative grows out of a movement to
de-militarize the mindset of the net and open it up to more democratic models.
By freeing the constraints of naming conventions imposed by the
central authority, the NIC, the artificial shortages created by
the command economy of names will disappear, and take along with
it the name speculators who bought up thousands of names (for $100 each)
in hopes of auctioning them off to the highest bidder.
name.space has begun the liberation of the network namespace
by creating a network of alternative root nameservers on the net
and making them available to all who wish to use them. name.space
seeks to support artistic and independent content by providing
new names for projects and virtual net addresses to support websites
named in namespace.
This is an open call for participation to creators of net-based
works, to request names for their projects, which will be presented
at first via links from the name.space. site. Network administrators
are invited to switch their named.cache file from the internic version
to the name.space. version which lists the name.space root servers
in place of the internic servers. Users are invited to change their
local tcp/ip nameserver settings to the name.space server network.
Instructions on how to do this reside at the name.space website.
The Winter Palace is about to be stormed! ....Thing.net in NYC
(http://www.thing.net) has been successfully running the name.space servers
as root for over 2 weeks providing their users with access to all the names
in name.space in addition to all the "traditional" net names. The rest of the
net will be next!
Other participating networks include:
desk.nl (http://desk.autono.net.)
<--
internationale stadt, Berlin (http://is.autono.net.)
muuMediaBase, Helsinki (http://muu.autono.net.)
LOIS, Ljubljana (http://ljudmila.autono.net.)
zero.tolerance.org, NY (http://zero.autono.net)
mediafilter, NY (http://mediafilter.autono.net)
More information can be found at the name.space. website
http://namespace.autono.net<--
/
The time is now to dissolve the monopoly on names and bring down
the centralized command economy of Network Solutions, Inc. (a.k.a. InterNIC).
Paul Garrin
eon@autono.net