This is primary an example of content suitable for the international wiki. Secondary it's geekish fun.
.pirates is a Top Level Domain (like .com) wich is available in most of the alternative root servers. It is maintained by Peter Dambier, a German pirate who has concerns regarding the current DNS administration and is a member of the "integrative nameserver" movement.
Rationale
(Like several other integrative TLDs) .pirates is not bound to any state or it's laws. Domains are for free and unlimited (in quantity and use)*. This makes our movement even more irrepressible. And even less reachable ;-) If the pressure on the freedom of the internet is increased further, this approach can be a part of the neccessary parallel networks occuring to avoid legal threats.
Also having access to .pirates usually means you switched to an alternative root. This gives you access not only to all common TLDs supported by the ICANN but also arabic and chinese ones as well as thousands of others. By the way it increaes your independency from US-centric DNS-control in
- * = Only domains strongly conflicting with pirate's attitude will be removed (at least I think so)
Services available
Service density is currently low. A full list should be found on http://arl.pirates. If you want you're own domain ask Peter Dambier. An automated registration is in progress.
There exist some mappings: for example http://bay.pirates resolves to 88.198.56.107 (thepiratebay.org).
How To Use
The .pirates-TLD is served by several root servers. One of them is the Cesidian Root (maintained by Peter Dambier). They offer four DNS servers for the european union. For US look at their website.
- 78.47.115.195
- 78.47.115.198
- 89.238.64.148
- 98.114.180.22
- 80.239.207.176
Enter them whereever your OS needs the DNS servers (usually network config -> tcp/ip -> dns or /etc/resolv.conf). Two should be enough.
