It'd be a lot easier to just write down the IP. Nobody is going to actually remember those words, and if they're on a shared IP it's not going to get to them anyhow.

And if they change IPs (because their host shut them down because the government forced it) then the 4 words are worthless.

Agreed. In fact, DNS was developed basically to address many of the problems with this (admittedly cute) idea :)

Its ancestor was basically a system where'd you download a new hosts file every day -- which was doable when the Internet was small, but didn't scale well.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)#History

Its a cool idea, but ultimately it won't help, because sites like these are only worth something if a lot of people know they are there.

A better solution is to create a de-centralized DNS system.

I suspect we are more likely to see splinter DNS networks get set up and people will just learn how to add these servers to their configs for name resolution...

Can also see a future where the public Internet is deemed completely untrustworthy and everyone just connects with trusted parties over VPNs....

EDIT: I'd forgotten about these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

I suspect even more that nothing will actually happen. People know there's risk in running torrent sites, they bet the ad revenue will outweigh it and eventually they lose.

Yeah, then the Internet could route around the damage, as designed.

Neat idea, now someone needs to setup DNS on a short domain to point to the correct IP, e.x.

http://LICK.GORY.ULAN.MUTT.4lw.com would point to 174.143.242.193

Of course, this won't work on virtual hosts.

Edit: or you could just setup a parallel DNS under your own namespace, e.x.

rabidgremlin.com.4lw.com would point to 174.143.242.193

Of course that requires manual administration.

This would be pretty easy to do with WebDNS: https://github.com/progrium/webdns

I'm not sure why it looks that the URL is through the coral cache, and it's making the site really slow. http://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/11/28/4-little-words/

It's a nice idea, though the word list may be refined a bit, and there could be larger word lists and something that takes account of nouns/verbs to create more cohesive sentences.

URL is via coral cache so that my tiny weeny webserver doesn't go bang :)

Interestingly it now looks like some sites are getting blocked by IP address as well...

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_litt...

False alarm:)

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_litt...

not really, the dude just got ice ip address, and not the one the site used.

It'd be nice if search engines could link to IPs rather than names for domains that have been censored.

Isn't it funny how google fights censorship in china, but not a peep when it's in the USA?

I love the fact that someone has turned my idea into a DNS server!

Check out: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ecllk/the_4_litt...

This is a good start, but won't work for HTTP 1.1 multi-site hosting.

The browser needs to send the HOST header with the correct host name, otherwise you'll just get the default site at that IP.

Of course it's actually easier to use bgp to hijack and blackhole a route for an IPv4 address than it is to get new nameservers inserted for a specific domain at the roots. If folks moved to rely on a system that didn't involve lookups, it would become even easier to take them down.

isn't bgp limited to send messages for at least /24?

technically no, but practically yes - most implementations discard routes more specific than a /24 to prevent their routing tables from becoming unmanageable.

Stealing a /24 is an awful amount of leverage in convincing the ISP to disconnect a /32 as long as you have enough pull to ensure large networks will continue to respect your routes.

I wrote a script to translate IP addresses into 4LW and back again.

https://gist.github.com/718549

How about just putting those entries in your /etc/hosts file?