According to Tech Watch the current state of the DNS (Domain Name System) system, the team behind The Pirate Bay have thrown down the gauntlet and announced plans for the creation of an alternative DNS system that is based on P2P (peer-to-peer) technology. In a terse statement posted on Baywords, the group wrote “The background for this project is that we want the Internet to be uncensored! Having a centralized system that controls our information flow is not acceptable.”
The existing DNS system works like a large distributed database, with the IP address obtained via a referral system demarcated by countries and/or types of domain. For example, domain names ending in .com, .org and .edu are controlled by known single organizations tasked with maintaining their portion of the database.
The creation of a P2P DNS that doesn’t make use of a centralize server is far from a trivial task, and it remains to be seen how The Pirate Bay will approach this challenge. One main problem is the inability to specify the service in the BitTorrent protocol, as well as the complete elimination of all centralized points. Finally, the resultant system will need to be sufficiently robust against hijacking or redirecting attempts by hackers.