Apologies ahead of time for the long post…
Quick Summary => SUDS/SUDO evolution via Public ID dictionary prefixes
I just started up the web hosting manager and it asked me to type in a “public id”, so I came to the forum to look for suggestions on id names and found this thread. Very informative.
I can see the positives and negatives to both sides to the argument. On the one hand you have the entrepreneurial minded who want to keep things familiar and easy to use for the masses while at the same time initiating a gold rush via simple word registrations, thereby monetizing the safe dns to the future benefit of either the site owners who get lucky enough to register first, or the network itself by holding certain names ransom (I think that discussion might have been on another thread). On the other hand you have those that are tired of domain squatters making creative life difficult on the oldnet and view that model at work in perpetuity on SAFE as an unholy union. After reading over some of your solutions to various concerns I’d like to offer a hybrid approach which I personally feel to be the best of both worlds. Perhaps this has been mentioned before on the forum and if so I apologize. Otherwise, please consider the following:
When I first browsed the internet years ago I relied a lot on directories, some people still do (craigslist, 4chan). Why not use the safe dns as a built in self-subscribing low-level directory feature. This would be accomplished by having the network reserve every single word in all human language dictionaries prior to launch. To some extent you could view this as the reverse of the .com,.net,.org dns extensions of present day where instead the SAFE network uses common language safe dns prefixes in order to guide the structure of this “safe universal directory structure” (suds) in a more egalitarian manner. For example:
safe://ants
safe://fourmis
safe://ameisen
safe://leannáin
safe://bird
safe://vogel
safe://cat
safe://chat
safe://dogs
safe://chien
safe://fish
safe://forums
safe://net
safe://news
safe://networks
safe://org
safe://organizations
safe://com
safe://gov
safe://government
safe://state
… etc
So when someone tries to reserve the easy dictionary words (in any language), they would already be taken, but an individual could still have something personalized like:
safe://debate.jlpell
safe://news.jlpell
safe://science.jlpell
safe://technology.jlpell
safe://engineering.jlpell
safe://mathematics.jlpell
safe://apps.jlpell
safe://comments.jlpell
If someone wanted to use sentences like:
safe://ilovesquattingsafesites
safe://safe.is.the.best.forever…
or if they just wanted some unique hash:
safe://5asldjsfl0q39rie2lendfslef2ds
they could do that too. It might also be good to reserve some space for traditional nationalities (cities, towns, and map data as well) for the good karma, although a lot of those will come out of the dictionary search:
safe://scotland
safe://australia
safe://usa
safe://london
safe://paris
There might be some name collisions, but MaidSafe along with the community could get some kind of consensus to sort them out pre launch.
Essentially I am suggesting that MaidSafe do the dictionary attack ahead of time and sequester those names. Next, I think you could take things one step further. if someone where to actually visit the root safe://mathematics id, it would provide some kind of an index with descriptions of all public id extensions that are found by longer id word combinations. This could be through users posting to some kind of a wiki, with user ratings and comments, or there could be a crawler app located there that would run GETS to crawl, summarize, and organize all the public ids under a given safe dns prefix.
Let’s face it, claiming a single word out of the dictionary to be your own personal domain is not really that creative. And if there are businesses on the oldnet that have chosen their business names that way then they will need to be creative in order to differentiate themselves. (ex: safe://apple.farmers.of.new.york vs. safe://apple.computers)
Maidsafe could probably put out a CEP for the best dictionary attack script and then use it prior to launch. Under this system you would still get some squatting with two and three word dictionary attacks and that is probably just fine. People that come up with a single word that’s not in the dictionary would be just fine too. At least the low hanging fruit will be set aside and people would need to show some innovation. Due to the perpetual nature of SAFE, I think it is too just dangerous to allow for the possibility that common language dictionary words could EVER be locked down. How far would we be if words used in computer languages were copyrighted FOREVER and only one person could use ‘if’ or ‘else’ or ‘while’ or ‘do’ or ‘main’? It seems like this type of self-subscribing directory structure would help ensure “Satisfactory Addresses For Everyone”.
EDIT: This concept for a “public reserve” or “game reserve” (analogy to reserve land set aside for endangered species) for Public IDs would address some of the discussion about domain squatting that took place in a related thread.