[cap-talk] crypto purism vs. Pet Names (was: Firefox breaks the principle of identifiability)

[Zooko O'Whielacronx]

Sandro Magi wrote:

> I don't see why a service like Google is impossible in this scenario. 
> You
> sign up for an internet account and your introductory page is your 
> ISP's
> start page; this is your portal to the internet. Your ISP has already 
> gone
> through the hassle of typing in Google's unique key (if this step is
> indeed necessary) and establishing a YURL to Google. Why not then just
> search for "Coca Cola"?

Indeed, and why couldn't I configure my Firefox that if I type in a 
name that isn't in my local Pet Name database, it will resolve it by 
querying verisign.com?

So Pet Names seem like they could be a superset of DNS-style names.  
This makes me suspicious of them, because they would then suffer an 
externality in practice which would tend to make for "name monopolies". 
  This would be the same bad result as we currently have with DNS and 
Verisign, even though it would arise from the emergent decisions of 
millions of agents in the presence of an externality rather than being 
a design decision imposed by the technology itself.

Regards,

Zooko