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> I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. I'm so lost at this assertion. How is this a social / politica

> I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. I'm so lost at this assertion. How is this a social / political problem? IPFS is not permanent hosting. It is not an attempt to take power away from others and distribute it to the masses. It is purely a technical problem, which i think is objectively true. I have a feeling that you believe IPFS is partially designed to subvert governments/etc. And to an extent, that may be possible, but it is being built with DMCA's in mind. IPFS wants to allow governments / copyright holders to take content down from the network. It is not trying to become a pirate haven. Why? Well, mainly because piracy inhibits adoption. There may not be a way to DMCA currently (i haven't checked in months), but there are Github issue(s) on it. The creators don't want to see IPFS blocked in countries because it can permanently host illegal content. Which makes a ton of sense. The problem IPFS is trying to solve, as i see it, is purely technical. As advertised in pretty much every pitch i've seen for this technology, we are simply scaling too fast in storage and not fast enough in bandwidth. It appears impossible to handle the infrastructure load of files we are creating. IPFS solves this by automatically pulling content as locally as possible, reducing network overhead. Furthermore, it means that a DDOS/viral/etc of a central resource will not kill it. It's safely and mostly permanently (barring DMCA/etc requests) available. So with that said, what political and social problem do you see IPFS trying to solve? I don't see any.

NeutronBoy 10y ago
> I'm so lost at this assertion. How is this a social / political problem? How is it a technical problem? Current web technologies allow decentralised web (except for maybe root name servers). Everyone can host their own content, control their own servers, basically everything below your hostname. The implementation has led down a centralised path.
- fizzbatter 10y ago
  > The implementation has led down a centralised path. Sure, but choosing another implementation is.. a technical choice, is it not? Are you saying that if i choose to implement a distributed method it's not technical? What is my choice then, political? Because i have no political motives.. purely technical. I want less data choking the pipes. Which is all IPFS is ultimately doing. Seems pretty technical (instead of social/political, atleast) to me. Am i missing what you were conveying?
cabalamat 10y ago
> [IPFS] is not trying to become a pirate haven. Why? Well, mainly because piracy inhibits adoption. Really? The number of BitTorrent users is considerably greater than the number of IPFS users, so surely the exact opposite is true. Maybe a piracy platform build on top of IPFS could be its killer app.
- fizzbatter 10y ago
  Well, that is fair. I'm mainly talking about "normal" adoption though. Eg, for a long time BitTorrent was being branded as a pirate haven. The only major players i saw adopt BitTorrent were open source projects needing to distribute large ISOs. IPFS is something that they're trying to get into standards, into browsers, into operating systems, etc. If it's known for distributing kiddy porn on the dark net it will be much more difficult. I know piracy spreads like wildfire, but it's not really the target audience for what IPFS is trying to do. In short, they want YouTube, not PirateBay. Or so i gather, at least. Do you disagree?
  - clueless404 10y ago
    If IPFS wants get gain traction and go mainstream, they still have you address the kiddy porn and piracy issue. You can't go downloading and seeding random hashes if this exposes you to criminal charges and/or law suites.
    - fizzbatter 10y ago
      They are addressing it, but it's a future feature. Last i saw on Github issues (it likely has evolved since then), they plan to have a central authority which allows for DMCAs/reports/etc of illegal content. The network then propagates an ignore list of sorts (or possibly watches a central list). Any nodes on the network which abide by this will simply not download and/or unpin the data. It doesn't prevent you from downloading some kiddy porn that a stranger sent you.. but neither does the internet. This, is purely to allow law to take place, and hopefully allow lawmakers to work with IPFS, and not block the whole damn thing.
inimino 10y ago
From the article: "The Internet has been one of the great equalizers in human history and a real accelerator of innovation. But the increasing consolidation of control is a threat to that. "IPFS remains true to the original vision of the open and flat web, but delivers the technology which makes that vision a reality." This presents IPFS as the technological cure for the "consolidation of control" that threatens the Internet. These are not purely technical problems.
- fizzbatter 10y ago
  That is unfortunate, because i have yet to see how IPFS is even remotely that. Especially since it wants to comply with DMCAs and etc. The technology and the marketing seem at odds, to me.

NeutronBoy 10y ago

> I'm so lost at this assertion. How is this a social / political problem? How is it a technical problem? Current web technologies allow decentralised web (except for maybe root name servers). Everyone can host their own content, control their own servers, basically everything below your hostname. The implementation has led down a centralised path.

fizzbatter 10y ago
> The implementation has led down a centralised path. Sure, but choosing another implementation is.. a technical choice, is it not? Are you saying that if i choose to implement a distributed method it's not technical? What is my choice then, political? Because i have no political motives.. purely technical. I want less data choking the pipes. Which is all IPFS is ultimately doing. Seems pretty technical (instead of social/political, atleast) to me. Am i missing what you were conveying?

cabalamat 10y ago

> [IPFS] is not trying to become a pirate haven. Why? Well, mainly because piracy inhibits adoption. Really? The number of BitTorrent users is considerably greater than the number of IPFS users, so surely the exact opposite is true. Maybe a piracy platform build on top of IPFS could be its killer app.

fizzbatter 10y ago
Well, that is fair. I'm mainly talking about "normal" adoption though. Eg, for a long time BitTorrent was being branded as a pirate haven. The only major players i saw adopt BitTorrent were open source projects needing to distribute large ISOs. IPFS is something that they're trying to get into standards, into browsers, into operating systems, etc. If it's known for distributing kiddy porn on the dark net it will be much more difficult. I know piracy spreads like wildfire, but it's not really the target audience for what IPFS is trying to do. In short, they want YouTube, not PirateBay. Or so i gather, at least. Do you disagree?
- clueless404 10y ago
  If IPFS wants get gain traction and go mainstream, they still have you address the kiddy porn and piracy issue. You can't go downloading and seeding random hashes if this exposes you to criminal charges and/or law suites.
  - fizzbatter 10y ago
    They are addressing it, but it's a future feature. Last i saw on Github issues (it likely has evolved since then), they plan to have a central authority which allows for DMCAs/reports/etc of illegal content. The network then propagates an ignore list of sorts (or possibly watches a central list). Any nodes on the network which abide by this will simply not download and/or unpin the data. It doesn't prevent you from downloading some kiddy porn that a stranger sent you.. but neither does the internet. This, is purely to allow law to take place, and hopefully allow lawmakers to work with IPFS, and not block the whole damn thing.

inimino 10y ago

From the article: "The Internet has been one of the great equalizers in human history and a real accelerator of innovation. But the increasing consolidation of control is a threat to that. "IPFS remains true to the original vision of the open and flat web, but delivers the technology which makes that vision a reality." This presents IPFS as the technological cure for the "consolidation of control" that threatens the Internet. These are not purely technical problems.

fizzbatter 10y ago
That is unfortunate, because i have yet to see how IPFS is even remotely that. Especially since it wants to comply with DMCAs and etc. The technology and the marketing seem at odds, to me.