For starters mirror the current root dns but refuse to remove any domains if they were tampered with by the RIAA and the like.

Remove all squated/harvested domains. (It's easy detect those), smarter people could think of what's next but this is a pretty good start.

That wouldn't solve the problem; that would just move control from a group that *definitely* shouldn't have it to a group that would make it marginally better in a few narrow cases. I said "decentralized" because I'd like to see a system where *nobody* has that control. I don't just want to see a centralized system with a different center.

I think you missed the point; I didn't give a "definition", I gave a few examples to make the point that P2P systems and security can indeed go together. The post I replied to seemed to have the impression that P2P and security didn't mix.

Many secure peer-to-peer systems exist, generally based on cryptography; often they provide more security than centralized systems.

For instance, Tor uses secure cryptography to provide anonymity in a way that just wouldn't work in a centralized system. i2p uses cryptographic security as well.

On the one hand, I absolutely want to see control over domain names taken out of anyone's hands (not just ICANN's).

However, decentralized naming is a *hard* problem. Only one entity can control a given domain name, and something, either human or automated, must decide who gets that domain name. Whether by fiat or general consensus, some process must exist to handle the case where multiple people want the same name. ("First come first served" does not suffice unless you have fees or some other measure to prevent mass registration, and decentralized control makes those measures difficult.)

(Numbers, by comparison, prove quite trivial; just use public keys. But people don't like typing in long numbers, they like typing in *names*.)

Aside the fictional Squirtler, does Twitter have any competition?

The main competition to Twitter consists of the OStatus standard, and its primary demo site identi.ca . Unfortunately it doesn't have much non-geek traction, mostly because it doesn't have much non-geek traction; no critical mass.

part of their education should include concern for the intellectual property of others

Sounds like a good idea; they should learn to find intellectual property deeply concerning. These students already have, the hard way.

And the DMCA and this insane exception-granting placation process means that unlike fair use, exceptions to the DMCA require someone to explicitly fight for them, with a default presumption of *not* allowing them.

As much as I'd like to see further unification of cables...

"Hmmm, not everyone hooks up their Blu-Ray player to a network connection, so we can't force 'upgrades', revoke keys, and use the latest DRM on new releases without breaking old hardware Blu-Ray players."
"I know, let's put video and network over the same cable!"
"Brilliant!"