content: DNS is the system that translates a URL into an IP address.  For example voat.co currently resolves to 104.20.81.63.  DNS is ultimately controlled by ICANN who mantain the root DNS servers.  ICANN was controlled by the US and subject to the first amendment, but Obongo gave up control of ICANN.  There are many DNS providers out there, most people end up using their ISP's DNS servers because they don't know any better.  The problem with this is the ISP knows your IP and is able to see all of your DNS requests letting them know where you're going on the internet.  The other problem with this is the DNS providers can remove or modify DNS entries.  For example, if they didn't like voat.co they could redirect it to reddit.    From what I can tell Handshake Naming System (HNS) is a decentralized block chain based DNS replacement to help mitigate the issues mentioned above.