Joss Winn on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:19:06 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> Wikileaks and Protocol


I don't know if Alexander Galloway is still on this list, but I was wondering 
what people thought about his argument that in Protocol (which
I'm in the middle of reading):

"All DNS information is controlled  in a hierarchical, inverted-tree
structure. Ironically, then, nearly all Web traffic must submit to a
hierarchical structure (DNS) to gain access to the anarchic and
radically horizontal structure of the Internet." (Protocol: How control
exists after decentralisation - 2004, p.9)

When wikileaks.org was "turned off" by EveryDNS, the site continued to
run at http://213.251.145.96/

A Google search for 'wikileaks' still places http://213.251.145.96/ at
the top of its results.

In my experience, most users of the web, do not use their location bar
to type in wikileaks.org, rather they search for 'wikileaks' and then
click on the appropriate result. In this case, they click on the link
for http://213.251.145.96/

In this example, the hierarchical structure of control of DNS seems to
have shifted to the hierarchical control of Google. Is it possible to
"turn off" a website by removing its DNS, when search engines are quick
to re-index? Has Google made an exception here to continue returning the
wikileaks site in its results, despite the absence of DNS?

Thanks,

Joss





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