[mindslight]

IP addresses are just a different type of name, and also assigned by hierarchical entities. NAT isn't the issue, rather it's the incumbent power structures gradually tightening the identity/control screws. If you have a public IP on your physical connection and use that for banned publishing, they go after the account holder listed for the physical connection, which eventually gets back to you - the same as if you obtain that public IP from Digital Ocean or a tunnel broker.

The only way around that is using naming systems that don't rely on centralized authorities, or at least can't be coerced by governments.

[fudgefactorfive]

I miss the days of sending someone a letter with some cash for them to associate address A with line B. All I'd have to do to stay essentially anonymous is finding a someone with bad record keeping.

Suddenly someone shows up with address A and threats and then drowns trying to interpret that persons mappings. While that's happening I can find 5 other someones and suddenly I have 6 addresses all of which essentially ephemerally link to my system. Someone else does that for their mapping system and you get to Dijkstra levels of working out how to block connections.

After like 3 levels of middlemen even centralized authorities just struggle to do the actual work of blocking, outside of just issuing the order.

[fragmede]

On the one hand, hosting companies don't like getting raided by the feds and taken offline because one of their customers is doing something objectionable.

So I doubt those 5 new addresses will remain live for all that much longer. When you're on the lam, digitally or physically, or both, you find out who your real friends are, real quick.

On the other hand, I can type "tpb" into Google and get to a bittorrent of Disney's latest hits in less than 5 clicks, so maybe the copyright regime doesn't have an omnipotent hand on the Internet.

[musicale]

I'm not sure how to deliver packets on the internet without destination IP addresses of some sort.

[mindslight]

The technique is to make it so that the destination/host the IP packets are going to isn't important. Say accessing a TOR hidden service - the IP address the packets are going to is that of any TOR node. To be useful, such an overlay network requires a different naming protocol (in this case, the TOR hidden service one), that allows services to have persistent identities without needing to publish DNS names or IP addresses.

Your traffic is still going to specific IP address(es), but this isn't useful for someone trying to censor, unless they can persecute those running TOR nodes and/or prevent access to all TOR nodes.

[musicale]

You seem to be describing an overlay network rather than a method of avoiding destination addresses in IP packets sent over the internet.