Sci-Hub is NOT on Handshake
Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:39 pm
I was stoked a few days ago when I saw that Sci-Hub was using Handshake to help users get to their treasure trove of ungated piratebayesque journal articles.
I discovered this new usage of a handshake domain for the controversial site via the Namebase notification feed, in screenshot below:
I'd never heard of Sci-Hub, but after perusing the Sci-Hub Wikipedia page and chasing down a few more links about them, I thought in my little noggin' -- "this is a perfect use case for handshake."
There was of course the rah rah publicity tweeting:
And an article followed on Coindesk announcing Pirated Academic Database Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’
Wow. What great news for us HNS fiends.
Alas, my stiffened was wilting in no time thanks to another Coindesk article that frosted my eggplant farm in emojiland, titled:
Sci-Hub Leaves Handshake Blockchain After 2 Days, Citing Centralization Concerns
...the HNS blocker of an article showcased some points about this lovely DNS blockchain that were plain wrong.
But, as we move to get usage and publicity and further attention focused on this widely misunderstand use case for blockchain from people accustomed to the entrenched ways of the legacy DNS system, the moral of the story is:
We HNS fiends are fighting an uphill battle...
We need to come to a more consistent approach in the differentiation of these TLDs in relation to SLDs that most people are accustomed to...
And, when gifting a "domain" to a project that could really benefit from what the Handshake blockchain has to offer, make sure to go full monty and gift the whole damn TLD and not some SLD that you control.
Nuff said.
Thoughts on how we can do better in the future and potentially re-engage the likes of Sci-Hub and similar projects that are perfect use cases for this HNS experiment?
I discovered this new usage of a handshake domain for the controversial site via the Namebase notification feed, in screenshot below:
I'd never heard of Sci-Hub, but after perusing the Sci-Hub Wikipedia page and chasing down a few more links about them, I thought in my little noggin' -- "this is a perfect use case for handshake."
There was of course the rah rah publicity tweeting:
And an article followed on Coindesk announcing Pirated Academic Database Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’
Wow. What great news for us HNS fiends.
Alas, my stiffened was wilting in no time thanks to another Coindesk article that frosted my eggplant farm in emojiland, titled:
Sci-Hub Leaves Handshake Blockchain After 2 Days, Citing Centralization Concerns
...the HNS blocker of an article showcased some points about this lovely DNS blockchain that were plain wrong.
But, as we move to get usage and publicity and further attention focused on this widely misunderstand use case for blockchain from people accustomed to the entrenched ways of the legacy DNS system, the moral of the story is:
We HNS fiends are fighting an uphill battle...
We need to come to a more consistent approach in the differentiation of these TLDs in relation to SLDs that most people are accustomed to...
And, when gifting a "domain" to a project that could really benefit from what the Handshake blockchain has to offer, make sure to go full monty and gift the whole damn TLD and not some SLD that you control.
Nuff said.
Thoughts on how we can do better in the future and potentially re-engage the likes of Sci-Hub and similar projects that are perfect use cases for this HNS experiment?