http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/368437/lawyer-no-hiding-place-from-us-for-web-piratesThe US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been taking down sites with illegal content and targeted one UK student with extradition, despite the content not being hosted in the US.
Erick Barnett, assistant deputy director for (ICE), told The Guardian that any site that uses a .com or .net domain name is fair game, as those are registered through US company Verisign.
There's so many stories like this coming out that are showing a growing demand for a system like Namecoin. I remember during the times when Wikileaks had their domain stolen, many people were calling for a distributed system to ensure security. People would love to be able to register domain names without them possibly being taken away, and without needing to associate their true identities with them (although they still can, of course).
Namecoins have a bright and hopeful future ahead. They have all the strengths of Bitcoins, in addition to the value of a distributed domain name system. Either, or both, could take hold and lead to true Internet freedom. The usage of this distributed domain system would start with the Bitcoin community, and spread virally into widespread acceptance. More
helpful pushes by Wikileaks would propel it forward even more.
Although still new and obscure, the three-month old Namecoin has quite an active community. The IRC channel has 150 or so people in it, compared to Bitcoin's 550. These are the people who will advance it forward, just like Bitcoin in its beginnings except at a faster rate. There is a
sub-reddit for it, a
project-page wiki,
forums, and an
exchange that's been stable and trustworthy so far. The exchange has never "Goxed" anybody and has supported high volumes in the past without issues. A new exchange is expected to come online as well.
However, Namecoin isn't without its flaws, although in my opinion fixable. The system is very unwieldy and even less user-friendly than Bitcoin. The Windows client does not yet have an official GUI. Most importantly, though, there is no easy way to set up the DNS system for your browser. Work is being done in these two areas. Furthermore, Namecoin could be perceived as a copy of Bitcoin, leading people to think there may be more to come and too many to handle.
Does anyone else have crystal-ball opinions on this? I just thought I'd share what I was musing about. Maybe I should have put this in off-topic.