4 ms·

Suppose I'm poking around IPFS and unintentionally download some unauthorized copyrighted content. Is my computer going to automatically start sharing this cont

by mcbits 10y ago

Suppose I'm poking around IPFS and unintentionally download some unauthorized copyrighted content. Is my computer going to automatically start sharing this content, exposing me and my ISP to legal action? Or if there is a way to prevent sharing particular content that I've accessed, what's to stop me from leeching everything and never sharing anything? (Edit: Ah, now I see "BitSwap" as possibly addressing my second question, but I'm still concerned about the first.)

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
For #1, yes. For #2, also yes, and there's nothing to stop you from leeching save the goodness of your heart and your own personal laziness.
- mcbits 10y ago
  Since it's impossible to know who owns, claims to own, or has licensed any particular content, #1 is a fatal flaw unless users can officially receive immunity (which seems doubtful). Otherwise we'll have a situation like speeding on the highway, where "everyone does it" at the risk of a random ticket, but in this case the fines are thousands to millions of dollars.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    I don't see how it's bad: the hosting user receives no credit, and local mirroring keeps retrieval speeds high. Your users effectively become a giant CDN for you. Who would sue?
    - mcbits 10y ago
      I wouldn't sue anyone. But I can watch music videos on YouTube without contacting all of the the relevant rights holders to ensure both the uploader and YouTube have permission to show me the video. On a distributed file share lacking anonymity and/or immunity, I have to ensure that I have those rights before viewing (thus distributing) any content. Immunity is not likely to happen, as it would amount to granting redistribution rights to anyone who downloads a piece of content. So the political solution is out. Anonymity is a requirement. That's not to say IPFS is useless. It's just not going to "replace HTTP" or any significant part of the web as long as it's possible to see who's sharing what. Or if it does, the sharks will feed.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        No, that doesn't add up: You only host data that's already available on a public network, pretty much by definition. If the rights distributor didn'f want it to be globally accessible, they wouldn't have put it up on IPFS.
        mcbits 10y ago
        I'm happy to play the naivete card when it comes to downloading. (If the producers didn't want me watching this CAM footage of a new release on YouTube, they wouldn't have uploaded it, wink wink.) I'm a bit more cautious when it comes to uploading.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        But you're not uploading something that hasn't been, you're mirroring something that's already up.
        clueless404 10y ago
        You won't have any luck with that argument in court. If you doubt me, see all verdicts for infringement when bitorrenting.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        But this is very different: This is more like the original copyright holder putting something on BitTorrent, inviting people to download it freely, and them suing anybody who seeds it: By putting the data on a P2P protocol, you've kind of implicitly stated that you're okay with people seeding, or whatever the local terminology for the same is.
        clueless404 10y ago
        Um, no. You have no guarantees that the content put up via IPFS is by the original copyright owner. Thus immediately after you receive the infringing content over IPFS and start seeding it, you are infringing on the copyright owners rights. You have no recourse and no legal defenses to protect you.
Mindless2112 10y ago
This seems to be a flaw in IPFS. If it reshares content automatically then other users can infer what content you have viewed. If it doesn't reshare content automatically then the likelihood of content actually being "distributed" rather than "centralized" is low because few users are going to actively choose content to reshare while browsing the web.

by mcbits 10y ago

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

For #1, yes. For #2, also yes, and there's nothing to stop you from leeching save the goodness of your heart and your own personal laziness.

mcbits 10y ago
Since it's impossible to know who owns, claims to own, or has licensed any particular content, #1 is a fatal flaw unless users can officially receive immunity (which seems doubtful). Otherwise we'll have a situation like speeding on the highway, where "everyone does it" at the risk of a random ticket, but in this case the fines are thousands to millions of dollars.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I don't see how it's bad: the hosting user receives no credit, and local mirroring keeps retrieval speeds high. Your users effectively become a giant CDN for you. Who would sue?
  - mcbits 10y ago
    I wouldn't sue anyone. But I can watch music videos on YouTube without contacting all of the the relevant rights holders to ensure both the uploader and YouTube have permission to show me the video. On a distributed file share lacking anonymity and/or immunity, I have to ensure that I have those rights before viewing (thus distributing) any content. Immunity is not likely to happen, as it would amount to granting redistribution rights to anyone who downloads a piece of content. So the political solution is out. Anonymity is a requirement. That's not to say IPFS is useless. It's just not going to "replace HTTP" or any significant part of the web as long as it's possible to see who's sharing what. Or if it does, the sharks will feed.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      No, that doesn't add up: You only host data that's already available on a public network, pretty much by definition. If the rights distributor didn'f want it to be globally accessible, they wouldn't have put it up on IPFS.
      - mcbits 10y ago
        I'm happy to play the naivete card when it comes to downloading. (If the producers didn't want me watching this CAM footage of a new release on YouTube, they wouldn't have uploaded it, wink wink.) I'm a bit more cautious when it comes to uploading.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        But you're not uploading something that hasn't been, you're mirroring something that's already up.
        clueless404 10y ago
        You won't have any luck with that argument in court. If you doubt me, see all verdicts for infringement when bitorrenting.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        But this is very different: This is more like the original copyright holder putting something on BitTorrent, inviting people to download it freely, and them suing anybody who seeds it: By putting the data on a P2P protocol, you've kind of implicitly stated that you're okay with people seeding, or whatever the local terminology for the same is.
        clueless404 10y ago
        Um, no. You have no guarantees that the content put up via IPFS is by the original copyright owner. Thus immediately after you receive the infringing content over IPFS and start seeding it, you are infringing on the copyright owners rights. You have no recourse and no legal defenses to protect you.

Mindless2112 10y ago

This seems to be a flaw in IPFS. If it reshares content automatically then other users can infer what content you have viewed. If it doesn't reshare content automatically then the likelihood of content actually being "distributed" rather than "centralized" is low because few users are going to actively choose content to reshare while browsing the web.