Subject: [hrpc] Idea of an http-protocol extension to prevent censorship

From: Mikael Svenn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 22:41:59 +0200

Hello,

I am new to the list, but due to preliminary discussion it seems that
this would be the right place to submit an idea for possible examination.

Last year I wrote a MSc thesis to the University of Helsinki about an
idea of a censorship-resistant Web that I've plaid with in my mind for
long. The thesis was approved, but my supervisor never really commented
on the idea itself.
I thought that if the idea would've been deemed feasible, it would've
been thoroughly discussed; and because it wasn't, there probably was no
potential in it.

However, it has kept bugging me that there haven't really been many
studies that would satisfy all the properties that a
censorship-resistant should have to become widely adopted. It may be
that my idea similarly fails to satisfy the requirements, or that it is
not feasible at all, but I felt that I should at least pass it forward
for someone else to decide. So if you have time and interest, I'd be
glad to hear any opinions about it.

The thesis is named "Static Web content distribution and request routing
in a P2P overlay" and can be found from: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/156668
High-level description of the idea begins from page 80, chapter 4, named
"HTTP2P Overlay".

As I assume it would be a long read to go through the whole text with
thought, I'll try to compress a TL;DR version below:

 - The Internet has mostly evolved on client/server-model. This can be
seen in many protocol designs, including HTTP.
 -> As a result, Internet censorship is possible in its current extent.
 - Several solutions exist to circumvent censorship, but they are
dependent on external applications and infrastructures; and additionally
appear to be a constant race between individual developers and the
censoring entities.
 -> Accessing information in the Internet should not require any special
CS competence despite of any censorship in place.

 - To deal with the root cause of the issue, a solution is needed that
is transparent, privacy-preserving (in a sense that it at least isn't
worse than the current situation) and that would set a very high price
for successful censorship.
 - To become widely adopted, the solution should benefit all parites of
the Internet ecosystem, including ISPs, content providers and the end-users.

=> So why not develop a P2P HTTP extension (!= Coral CDN) that would not
only allow access to static resources, but would enable two-way
communication with the Web server, thus enabling fully dynamic content
to the P2P-based requests as well.

All the required technologies already exist, they just need to be
combined in a way that can overcome the P2P-related caveats. I think
such could be achievable with a hybrid P2P construct that has remote
resemblance with CAN P2P-overlay design. In the thesis I speak of HTTP2P
as I envisioned it could be made completely transparent to the end-user,
only requiring the URL to be typed in a form "http2p://www.example.com".

Hopefully the idea at least raises further ideas if nothing else.

Best Regards,
Mikael Svenn
[email-masked]