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Reading this felt kind of like the first time I read a writeup on Bitcoin. There's the same sense of throwing out some old, formerly immutable rules here, the e

Reading this felt kind of like the first time I read a writeup on Bitcoin. There's the same sense of throwing out some old, formerly immutable rules here, the excitement of something that's going to test some boundaries and inevitably clash with some authority (how can you, for instance, comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten" when that information is scattered into a redundant mesh?). Interesting times ahead for IPFS.

jeswin 11y ago
Agree. What we really need is for browser vendors to get together, bring in the tremendous financial and technical resources they have, and get a decentralized protocol formalized and supported across browsers. It may take years, but it needs to be done. That would change the internet, and the world.
- _prometheus 11y ago
  Two pieces of (coming soon) good news: - very soon, you wont need to install anything to use IPFS. it will "just work" with js on today's browsers. - for best perf, yes, we need browser implementations. and... those have begun :)
  - fabrice_d 11y ago
    Cool! Do you have links to browser implementations?
  - lallysingh 11y ago
    Are those implementations extensions or do they require native code changes?
  - sdoering 11y ago
    OK, as apparently .js is the defacto thing to build cool sites, I for one will be left out here. On sites not known to me, I typically block most (read all) .js at first, just to make sure that these sites do not leak too much information about me to external tracking tools, advertisers or the like. So using .js seems to me a bit problematic in regards of people not enabling it by default (but this is an absolut minority, if I look at the stats of the sites I analyze).
    - ossreality 11y ago
      So then disable it and connect to ipfs in other ways, instead of lecturing everyone on how 90% of the web you use everyday is broken
    - drdeca 11y ago
      Well, I think you can install something to use it without js, and they were just saying js would be for if someone wished to use it by simply using a webpage, with no install?
    - laumars 11y ago
      I use a custom hosts file (well, technically I run it as an internal DNS server) from Someone Who Cares to block most of the aforementioned annoyances: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ It works very well for me so I'd recommend it to others, if they're not already aware of it.
      - tropin 11y ago
        I've always wondered if Windows or other operative systems read the entire hosts file everytime they want to resolve an address. Maybe a big hosts file is bad for network performance?
        dsr_ 11y ago
        It will largely be read out of memory, since it doesn't change much and is frequently requested. Scanning 64K or so won't break a sweat compared to doing a DNS lookup across the network to a resolver that might itself need to make a request.
    - nightpool 11y ago
      The first implementation of IPFS is written in Go, and it includes fully functional nodes, http gateways, and libraries, but they're also working on a node.js version (that's also compatible with browser environments) so that non-technical users can have ipfs sites "just work". (although it requires at least static content served from a "normal" http/html server)
  - crypt0x 11y ago
    Somebody with golang-foo, firefox addon experience and a itch might also want to take a look at http://id-rsa.pub/post/go15-calling-go-shared-libs-from-firefox-addon/ http://id-rsa.pub/post/go15-calling-go-shared-libs-from-fire...
_prometheus 11y ago
Thanks for the kind words. :) Come join us! https://github.com/ipfs/ https://github.com/ipfs/
- hosh 11y ago
  You guys are great! :-)
  - synctext 11y ago
    Interesting project addressing linkrot and central servers. Hopefully this line of work will attract more attention and developers. Sadly the design contains some flaws that need addressing. From their whitepaper (http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf) The architecture is essentially creating 1 giant Bittorrent swarm where each piece may be seeded by different people. See section 3.4.4 of whitepaper. This approach suffers from the "double coincidence of wants" problem. There will be a billion items if this takes off. Matches are rare and could take hours/days. "Aside from BitSwap, which is a novel protocol". These types of protocols have been worked on for over 8 years. Nobody has ever been able to protect them from an Eclipse or Sybil attack. Early work: http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cse400/CSE400_2005_2006/Wang/Writeup.pdf http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cse400/CSE400_2005_2006/Wang/Writ... Deployed system from my research group, improved upon for 7 years now: http://www.pds.twi.tudelft.nl/~pouwelse/A_network_science_perspective_of_a_distributed_reputation_mechanism.pdf http://www.pds.twi.tudelft.nl/~pouwelse/A_network_science_pe...
    - hosh 11y ago
      I haven't thought about IPFS in months. One thing I do remember thinking about months ago, are aggregators and distributed indexers. I don't know enough about those kind of security attacks to comment. My comment "you guys are great!" refers to their team as people not necessarily the project itself. I've worked with them before, and they are awesome folks.
viraptor 11y ago
Right to be forgotten however applies only to search engines right now, doesn't it? The articles the results used to point to still exist. So a redundant mesh itself doesn't seem to apply here.
- sdoering 11y ago
  Sorry, hadn't read your comment, before stating the same. Hat tip to you.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- skissane 11y ago
  The "right to be forgotten" applies to any information service, not just search engines. However, search engines are often easier legal targets since they do business in the EU and thus can be made subject to EU law. If I have no business in the EU, and post my website on a non-EU hosting provider, EU law can demand I take down a page but has no jurisdiction to force me or force my provider. But e.g. Google, since they do business in many EU member states (primarily sell advertising), if they disobey EU law, EU governments/courts can take legal action against them (e.g. confiscate their EU advertising revenue).
  - tokenizerrr 11y ago
    As far as I'm aware that's simply not true. See http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets... Furthermore the right to be forgotten only mandates hiding results when someone searches specifically for a name, for example. The results are still allowed to come up for unrelated search terms.
    - skissane 11y ago
      Directive 95/46/EC (the Data Protection Directive) never specifically mentions "search engines", it talks about "controllers" of personal data. The ECJ ruled (Case C‑131/12) that search engines such as Google count as controllers of personal data, and thus are subject to the "right to be forgotten" under the Directive. But clearly the Directive is applicable to many other things than search engines, so the "right to be forgotten" cannot be restricted to search engines either. (Newspapers should be exempt because article 9 of the directive has an exemption for "the processing of personal data carried out solely for journalistic purposes or the purpose of artistic or literary expression", but search engines don't fall into that category, and other web sites may or may not either.) The court judgement - http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?doclang=EN&text&pageIndex=0&part=1&mode=DOC&docid=152065&occ=first&dir&cid=437838 http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?doc... - paragraph 26 says "As regards in particular the internet, the Court has already had occasion to state that the operation of loading personal data on an internet page must be considered to be such ‘processing’ within the meaning of Article 2(b) of Directive 95/46" - so by the Court's reasoning the Directive potentially applies to any web page, not just search engines.
sdoering 11y ago
Isn't the right to be forgotten something, that esp. relates to search engines? They (esp. Google) have to delete the links to this content, but the content can stay on the web forever. So this isn't per se a problem. But what happens, when I act as a "mirror" in this net and have mirrored some questionable content (who ever might define questionable is up to anybody to imagine). Will I get a shake down from the authorities, as oftentimes happened with people having tor exit nodes? I fear that the clash would come rather sooner then later, as a lot of people do have a lot of incentives for a centralized web (money, politics, control, power).
- paublyrne 11y ago
  I don't believe that law should be shaped by technology in principle. It should be shaped by what the majority think is right for society. But the right to be forgotten is a flawed concept to me, and I think any tech that makes its implementation more problematic will do us a favour.
  - phatbyte 11y ago
    But problem is that it is. It's a EU law, so while I agree with you, I sense the IPFS will clash with this law. Let's wait and see, progress can't be stopped though...
  - phatbyte 11y ago
    But problem is that it is. It's a EU law, so while I agree with you, I sense the IPFS will clash with this law. Let's wait and see, progress can't be stopped though...
  - npongratz 11y ago
    > It should be shaped by what the majority think is right for society. I would kindly suggest that we consider examples from history when laws backed by the majority have resulted in horrifying, depraved violence and deprivation; then contemplate whether it is indeed moral to shape law through majority opinion.
astrobe_ 11y ago
As far as I understand it, you must issue a "pin" command in order to relay or "host" contents. So if some contents is illegal, authorities can command you to "unpin" it. It's a better option than having to take down your whole node.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>for instance, comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten" Easy: The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Oh, right, we're not calling this censorship yet. Funny how quick we are to put up mirrors to Tibet and Tank Man content but somehow we're on the hook to protect London businesspeople and corporations from criticism? Like Bitcoin or Bittorrent and other decentralized applications, it will not be able to follow the dictates of nation states and it will be on nation states themselves to filter appropriately. There's no one to call to remove "unwanted" content. No one to hit with fines, taxes, lawsuits, and fees. Also, there's a discussion to have in regards to EU shakedowns of US companies. These billions of dollars in fees that go straight to the EU don't seem like consumer protection to me, but fundraising. Billions of dollars in fees for "bundling media players" or "having an Android monopoly" should give any wannabe entrepreneurs pause. Its a shame that the EU is unquestionable on sites like HN and reddit. There's a lot of questionable morality here and obvious signs of corruption. So yeah, not being able to be dictated by the EU or any nation state is a feature, not a bug.

jeswin 11y ago

Agree. What we really need is for browser vendors to get together, bring in the tremendous financial and technical resources they have, and get a decentralized protocol formalized and supported across browsers. It may take years, but it needs to be done. That would change the internet, and the world.

_prometheus 11y ago
Two pieces of (coming soon) good news: - very soon, you wont need to install anything to use IPFS. it will "just work" with js on today's browsers. - for best perf, yes, we need browser implementations. and... those have begun :)
- fabrice_d 11y ago
  Cool! Do you have links to browser implementations?
- lallysingh 11y ago
  Are those implementations extensions or do they require native code changes?
- sdoering 11y ago
  OK, as apparently .js is the defacto thing to build cool sites, I for one will be left out here. On sites not known to me, I typically block most (read all) .js at first, just to make sure that these sites do not leak too much information about me to external tracking tools, advertisers or the like. So using .js seems to me a bit problematic in regards of people not enabling it by default (but this is an absolut minority, if I look at the stats of the sites I analyze).
  - ossreality 11y ago
    So then disable it and connect to ipfs in other ways, instead of lecturing everyone on how 90% of the web you use everyday is broken
  - drdeca 11y ago
    Well, I think you can install something to use it without js, and they were just saying js would be for if someone wished to use it by simply using a webpage, with no install?
  - laumars 11y ago
    I use a custom hosts file (well, technically I run it as an internal DNS server) from Someone Who Cares to block most of the aforementioned annoyances: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ It works very well for me so I'd recommend it to others, if they're not already aware of it.
    - tropin 11y ago
      I've always wondered if Windows or other operative systems read the entire hosts file everytime they want to resolve an address. Maybe a big hosts file is bad for network performance?
      - dsr_ 11y ago
        It will largely be read out of memory, since it doesn't change much and is frequently requested. Scanning 64K or so won't break a sweat compared to doing a DNS lookup across the network to a resolver that might itself need to make a request.
  - nightpool 11y ago
    The first implementation of IPFS is written in Go, and it includes fully functional nodes, http gateways, and libraries, but they're also working on a node.js version (that's also compatible with browser environments) so that non-technical users can have ipfs sites "just work". (although it requires at least static content served from a "normal" http/html server)
- crypt0x 11y ago
  Somebody with golang-foo, firefox addon experience and a itch might also want to take a look at http://id-rsa.pub/post/go15-calling-go-shared-libs-from-firefox-addon/ http://id-rsa.pub/post/go15-calling-go-shared-libs-from-fire...

_prometheus 11y ago

Thanks for the kind words. :) Come join us! https://github.com/ipfs/ https://github.com/ipfs/

hosh 11y ago
You guys are great! :-)
- synctext 11y ago
  Interesting project addressing linkrot and central servers. Hopefully this line of work will attract more attention and developers. Sadly the design contains some flaws that need addressing. From their whitepaper (http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf) The architecture is essentially creating 1 giant Bittorrent swarm where each piece may be seeded by different people. See section 3.4.4 of whitepaper. This approach suffers from the "double coincidence of wants" problem. There will be a billion items if this takes off. Matches are rare and could take hours/days. "Aside from BitSwap, which is a novel protocol". These types of protocols have been worked on for over 8 years. Nobody has ever been able to protect them from an Eclipse or Sybil attack. Early work: http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cse400/CSE400_2005_2006/Wang/Writeup.pdf http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cse400/CSE400_2005_2006/Wang/Writ... Deployed system from my research group, improved upon for 7 years now: http://www.pds.twi.tudelft.nl/~pouwelse/A_network_science_perspective_of_a_distributed_reputation_mechanism.pdf http://www.pds.twi.tudelft.nl/~pouwelse/A_network_science_pe...
  - hosh 11y ago
    I haven't thought about IPFS in months. One thing I do remember thinking about months ago, are aggregators and distributed indexers. I don't know enough about those kind of security attacks to comment. My comment "you guys are great!" refers to their team as people not necessarily the project itself. I've worked with them before, and they are awesome folks.

viraptor 11y ago

Right to be forgotten however applies only to search engines right now, doesn't it? The articles the results used to point to still exist. So a redundant mesh itself doesn't seem to apply here.

sdoering 11y ago
Sorry, hadn't read your comment, before stating the same. Hat tip to you.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
skissane 11y ago
The "right to be forgotten" applies to any information service, not just search engines. However, search engines are often easier legal targets since they do business in the EU and thus can be made subject to EU law. If I have no business in the EU, and post my website on a non-EU hosting provider, EU law can demand I take down a page but has no jurisdiction to force me or force my provider. But e.g. Google, since they do business in many EU member states (primarily sell advertising), if they disobey EU law, EU governments/courts can take legal action against them (e.g. confiscate their EU advertising revenue).
- tokenizerrr 11y ago
  As far as I'm aware that's simply not true. See http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets... Furthermore the right to be forgotten only mandates hiding results when someone searches specifically for a name, for example. The results are still allowed to come up for unrelated search terms.
  - skissane 11y ago
    Directive 95/46/EC (the Data Protection Directive) never specifically mentions "search engines", it talks about "controllers" of personal data. The ECJ ruled (Case C‑131/12) that search engines such as Google count as controllers of personal data, and thus are subject to the "right to be forgotten" under the Directive. But clearly the Directive is applicable to many other things than search engines, so the "right to be forgotten" cannot be restricted to search engines either. (Newspapers should be exempt because article 9 of the directive has an exemption for "the processing of personal data carried out solely for journalistic purposes or the purpose of artistic or literary expression", but search engines don't fall into that category, and other web sites may or may not either.) The court judgement - http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?doclang=EN&text&pageIndex=0&part=1&mode=DOC&docid=152065&occ=first&dir&cid=437838 http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?doc... - paragraph 26 says "As regards in particular the internet, the Court has already had occasion to state that the operation of loading personal data on an internet page must be considered to be such ‘processing’ within the meaning of Article 2(b) of Directive 95/46" - so by the Court's reasoning the Directive potentially applies to any web page, not just search engines.

sdoering 11y ago

Isn't the right to be forgotten something, that esp. relates to search engines? They (esp. Google) have to delete the links to this content, but the content can stay on the web forever. So this isn't per se a problem. But what happens, when I act as a "mirror" in this net and have mirrored some questionable content (who ever might define questionable is up to anybody to imagine). Will I get a shake down from the authorities, as oftentimes happened with people having tor exit nodes? I fear that the clash would come rather sooner then later, as a lot of people do have a lot of incentives for a centralized web (money, politics, control, power).

paublyrne 11y ago
I don't believe that law should be shaped by technology in principle. It should be shaped by what the majority think is right for society. But the right to be forgotten is a flawed concept to me, and I think any tech that makes its implementation more problematic will do us a favour.
- phatbyte 11y ago
  But problem is that it is. It's a EU law, so while I agree with you, I sense the IPFS will clash with this law. Let's wait and see, progress can't be stopped though...
- phatbyte 11y ago
  But problem is that it is. It's a EU law, so while I agree with you, I sense the IPFS will clash with this law. Let's wait and see, progress can't be stopped though...
- npongratz 11y ago
  > It should be shaped by what the majority think is right for society. I would kindly suggest that we consider examples from history when laws backed by the majority have resulted in horrifying, depraved violence and deprivation; then contemplate whether it is indeed moral to shape law through majority opinion.

astrobe_ 11y ago

As far as I understand it, you must issue a "pin" command in order to relay or "host" contents. So if some contents is illegal, authorities can command you to "unpin" it. It's a better option than having to take down your whole node.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

>for instance, comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten" Easy: The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Oh, right, we're not calling this censorship yet. Funny how quick we are to put up mirrors to Tibet and Tank Man content but somehow we're on the hook to protect London businesspeople and corporations from criticism? Like Bitcoin or Bittorrent and other decentralized applications, it will not be able to follow the dictates of nation states and it will be on nation states themselves to filter appropriately. There's no one to call to remove "unwanted" content. No one to hit with fines, taxes, lawsuits, and fees. Also, there's a discussion to have in regards to EU shakedowns of US companies. These billions of dollars in fees that go straight to the EU don't seem like consumer protection to me, but fundraising. Billions of dollars in fees for "bundling media players" or "having an Android monopoly" should give any wannabe entrepreneurs pause. Its a shame that the EU is unquestionable on sites like HN and reddit. There's a lot of questionable morality here and obvious signs of corruption. So yeah, not being able to be dictated by the EU or any nation state is a feature, not a bug.