When the Internet Nearly Fractured 119
An anonymous reader writes "The Atlantic has a fascinating, if lengthy, story about a man named Eugene Kashpureff who 'ignited a battle over the future of the global network' by launching a rogue DNS registry in the late '90s. Here's an excerpt: 'He opted to go a step beyond simply registering sites on alternative top-level domains, and hijacked traffic intended for InterNIC.net. He pointed the domain to his own site, where he lodged a note of protest over how the domain name space was being controlled, and then offered visitors the option of continuing on to Network Solution's site. This was, you'll recall, at about the same moment that the federal government was attempting to make the case to the business community, to the world, that this Internet thing was no digital Wild West.'"
Re:no digital Wild West (Score:5, Funny)
If it were the ultimate tool for "freedom and anarchy" would that be a good thing for society?
Imagine if you couldn't trust the data on wikipedia
Or if your bank account access could be spoofed
Or your emails could be read by anyone
Or even a reputable site by a known firm with a reputation to protect would use online tools to deceive
What if lone individuals could topple governments and cause international diplomatic incidents?
How much worse a place would the world be then? I think you'd have serious problems in that scenario. No I think that for any one faction in this to win would be to the detriment of us all.
Re:So then, (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't jacking off one of the fundamentals of the internet?
Re:DNS not inherent (Score:5, Funny)