After you read this post and follow its instructions, you will be able to show how all the money and energy being spent on censoring the Internet was pointless. Plus, give yourself a more free web browsing experience.

As Rick pointed out in a recent post, the United States Government has declared war on trade, making its attack through the DNS system: one of the most critical and forgotten pieces of infrastructure on the Internet. Governments all over the world are destroying access to information by the corruption of local DNS systems. It’s time we reclaim our Internet by taking back our DNS.

Too Long; Didn’t Read Blah blah blah Travis, just tell me what I need to know….Okay go to UseOpenNIC.org and follow the instructions

There are currently many “Alt-Roots” out there for you to choose from, and many more are popping up every day, even when writing this post I had a friend ask me to write about some of these new bitcoin based DNS systems instead. When dealing with DNS, however, I want a reliable system that has been proven; a system that is democratic and decentralized; I want OpenNIC.

To give a brief overview: OpenNIC is over 12 years old (which is basically 120 years old in Internet time), and is the DNS root used by many popular people within our community such as TiAMO (Pirate Bay dude) and NovaKing (EZTV dude). It has a mailing list where new TLDs are democratically voted on; a transparent way of knowing who is logging what when you use their server for your DNS; and the ability to choose what country your DNS goes through. Finally, and most importantly for most people, it still resolves ICAAN TLDs so you can still go to your favourite dot-coms (and even better, you can go to your favourite dot-coms even if they are blocked in your country).

OpenNIC TLDs are community owned so they don’t get seized, even if a server was shut off, the TLDs would still resolve through the system due to the decentralized nature of the network. Finally when you switch your DNS to OpenNIC you have removed the power of your government and the United States government to block what websites you go to. By making this quick and transparent change to your computer, you are protecting the internet

I have created a very simple website to help you sign up for OpenNIC in under a minute, go to //useopennic.org, put in the country you want your DNS to be in, select your operating system, and you will get a guide which will help you setup your computer in less than a minute.