Pirate DNS

Some of the main characters in the peer to peer file sharing world, led by former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde have announced their intentions to launch a competitor to the ICANN manged DNS system. ICANN is an independent non-profit organization, however it often complies with the wishes of the U.S. government. The alternative system will feature its own root server followed by a full naming system. The Pirate Bay is an infamous web site known for the coordination of illegal file sharing on the Internet who's servers are constantly on the move across the world while it's operators thumb their noses at law enforcement. The ultimate purpose of the so called “P2P DNS” project is to maintain an Internet free from censorship according to Sunde. The alternative root server can accomplish this by providing an alternative system to map familiar domain names such as google.com to the IP addresses that the Internet uses to route traffic.

The announcement of this alternative DNS system is immediately on the heels of the Department of Homeland Security seizing a number of domain names linked to websites that are linked to illegal files haring.  Sites such as Torrent-finder.com, DVDcollects, and TorrentFreak.com were taken over by the DHS and visitors were greeted by an image explaining the seizure.  In all, more than 70 domain names were seized.  Surprisingly, The Pirate Bay escaped this round of seizures despite them being a high profile target in the past.  Another popular torrent tracking site, Demonoid,com recently announced that it will be changing it's domain name to Demonoid.me.  The U.S. does not have jurisdiction over .me as it does over .com.