Re: [hrpc] Working group last call for draft-irtf-hrpc-guidelines

[Mallory Knodel <[e-mail]>]

On Monday, June 28, 2021, Gurshabad Grover <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> > Section 2.3.13
> >
> > I don't know that we have *any* real success stories for
> > decentralization.  HTTP certainly isn't one.  Certainly designing
> > *toward* centralization might be best, but I don't think we have very
> > many examples of that *either.*  Moreover, I have argued, and continue
> > to argue, that some centralization may *facilitate* human rights.  If
> > you take into account the combination of DOH + cloud, an observer must
> > go to far greater lengths to discern even so much as the nature of the
> > traffic, much less content and actual endpoint.
> >
> > And this raises another issue: the point of much of cloud services is to
> > improve individual service reliability.  And yet those same cloud
> > services are a form of centralization.  If you consider that perhaps a
> > handful of players might force DNS traffic to a limited number of
> > resolver services, we might also say that DoH itself presents
> > centralization risks.
> >
> > These sorts of conflicts are of course to be expected.  The question is
> > whether it is worth providing guidance relating to centralization.  I
> > will claim that nobody yet has a real handle in this area, and so better
> > to say nothing in the form of guidance.  Instead, it seems to me to be
> > good fodder for future work.
> >
>
> I don't think I have a strong opinion about this. Before making any
> changes in this section, however, I'd love to hear what others think.
>

I do think that while centralisation can be leveraged for good that it’s
well established that an interoperable, resilient decentralised internet
architecture is ideal for the public interest. So there may be trade offs.
I would point to the section on consolidation in the paper Shivan and I
wrote on DNS Privacy Vs (the public interest).

It’s important to keep in mind the tensions so that we aren’t dogmatically
accepting either scenario.

Here’s that text: https://github.com/mallory/DNS-Privacy.

Great work getting this new version out!

-M



-- 
Mallory Knodel
CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
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