Is the 12 root server organisations an example of decentralisation?

Yup. As well as the decentralization and diversity of the technical operations of each pool. Operational diversity can be as important or even more important than technical diversity since humans tend to be the weakest links in technical chains :p

> Is the 12 root server organisations an example of decentralisation?

It isn't.

Proof: the fact that US random three letter agencies can take down websites.

Taking down websites has nothing at all to do with the root servers. The root servers only distribute information about which nameserver is responsible for which TLD, and doesn't concern individual websites at all.

It is impossible to build any website that cannot be taken down. The government could seize the physical servers if they wanted to. By your definition that means nothing is decentralized.

>It is impossible to build any website that cannot be taken down

This is becoming less true each day, especially with the advent of IPFS and Ethereum. Uniswap's website will never go down. uniswap.org might be seized but uniswap.eth cannot be altered by anyone.

In a few decades it will be normal for websites to be decentralized and permanent. It's actually quite needed for the robustness of critical internet architecture.

I am not sure about IPFS but didn't Ethereum have a 51% attack last year?

No. You are probably thinking about Ethereum Classic which has been 51% attacked a few times.

This sounds like a problem to solve.

How? Even if you were to host a website on a satellite the government could launch a rocket and blow it up. If the website is hosted on Earth they could physically cut cables if they wanted to. There is no way to fully prevent the government from preventing access to a website. The internet is decentralized, but not fully immune from governments.

I mean, you can have more than one copy of the website. Maybe a government can send one satellite-destroying missile, but probably not thousands of them.

Think about how many people have the Linux kernel Git repo cloned on their workstation. It would be essentially impossible for any government to destroy all copies.

No it isn't. It's a crutch, but also one of the most centralized, manipulable levers for controlling what is and isn't discoverable on the Net.

Think about it. Domain names are seizable. IP's aren't. You can't stop someone with an IP from existing.

Whenever someone talks about regulating DNS, it should translate to "We want to take control of Namespace management.

Handshake.org provides an alternate root zone that seems pretty relevant here

Hear me out: BLOCKCHAIN DNS!

/s

This ended with /s but DNS and other global namespace management systems are actually one of the problems blockchains solve perfectly. We all need to know what the value of some key->value pair is and have that information always available and easy to update. Blockchains handle data distribution natively, allow updates from authorized parties, and have 100% uptime. Transitioning DNS to something like ENS is something with lots of upsides and few downsides.

Take a look at https://ens.domains/about and https://handshake.org/

Aaron Swartz (edit) had the same idea http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko

There's no ch in Swartz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin all you want