22 ms·

Uncensorable Wikipedia on IPFS

692 points by bpierre 10y ago

captn3m0 10y ago
The SSL cert chain is broken for me.
- lgierth 10y ago
  What client and error? Works here and ssllabs.com has always turned up good results. Maybe it's the fact it's (still) a StartSSL cert?
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    Yes, that's probably it. [1] [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new-wosign-and-startcom-certificates/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new...
- iRobbery 10y ago
  startcom CA, i've noticed this seems broken more often. Maybe not included in all CA-Cert collections for some operating systems.
  - dspillett 10y ago
    startcom and wosign (startcom is now owned by wosign) certificates signed after a certain date are not trusted by some browsers by default due to the back-dating issue last year. Because of the same trust issues some organisations have their OS and browser installations configured to not trust any certificate signed by startcom or wosign (or a certificate that chains to one of theirs).
    - Kubuxu 10y ago
      Gentoo is one of distributions that distrusted startcom and wosign certs completely not following any depreciation paths.
- Kubuxu 10y ago
  We wanted to switch long time ago to Let's Encrypt, unfortunately it isn't that simple when you have 10ths of domains and subdomains, distributed among 5-10 servers.
- dodgedcactii 10y ago
  Nope.
hd4 10y ago
Maybe a very dumb question, but why didn't they build anonymity into it rather than advise users to route it over Tor? My guess is it may have something to do with the Unix philosophy. It's still a great tool regardless.
- problems 10y ago
  IPFS isn't designed for anonymity, it's designed for performance. If you want a similar tool designed for anonymity, Freenet is it.
- whyrusleeping 10y ago
  Building anonymity into a tool is not trivial. Doing it right is very hard. Doing it right also has significant drawbacks in terms of performance for people who don't need anonyminity. Tor is a great, well studied and well supported way for people to browse anonymously, so yeah, definitely a bit of the unix philosophy in there. That said, we plan on building anonymity tooling into ipfs in the future, its just non-trivial.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - lgierth 10y ago
    @whyrusleeping is right, and adding to that, there's a work-in-progress Onion transport which is already being used by OpenBazaar in their fork of go-ipfs. The respective work on making IPFS's routing work safely in an anonymous use case will be upstreamed soon.
- placeybordeaux 10y ago
  Why build something that is very hard to get right if there's already a way to accomplish what you want?
- Nokinside 10y ago
  Building anonymity to every tool provides less anonymity than building tools for anonymity that work with multiple protocols and applications. It's better to use ipfs trough I2P or Tor if you need anonymity and hide your actions in larger traffic.
kibwen 10y ago
But Wikipedia allows user edits, and so is inherently censorable. You don't need to block the site, you can just sneak in propaganda a little at a time.
- devwastaken 10y ago
  That is significantly harder to do.
- dmix 10y ago
  That's a casual reductionist definition of censorship. Community edited wiki != Censorship Centrally administered information channels == Censorship The state has equal power as citizens to make edits. Meanwhile the state has exclusive power to shut down network access, persecute people for publishing edits or providing access to censored information, chilling effects, etc. Pretty big difference.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    That really depends on the community and the nature of their editing. What if Westboro Baptist Church members decided to do nothing but en-masse gradually edit their Wikipedia page? You would probably categorize their actions as an attempt at propaganda and censorship. (On a short term, of course.) It ultimately wouldn't work, since they are such a small group. However, if a large enough segment of the populace decided on a program like this, which also included an infiltration of the higher-level of Wikipedia's organization, such a program would probably work.
    - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
      Content addressing means that all versions of the page remain available so long as one node hosts it, and they are easily differentiated. On the internet 1000 voices don't speak 1000 times louder than one, it would be relatively easy for a small group to widely advertise that there is a discrepancy. Effective propaganda would only be possible where any contradictions are unable to provide evidence, causing an appeal to authority to become one of the most viable means of resolving the dispute. This is where the majority - but not all - of our current propaganda sits. IPFS would help. It wouldn't solve disinformation but it would tidy up the game.
treytrey 10y ago
I'm not sure this thought makes sense, but just putting it out there for rebuttals and to understand what is really possible: I assume IPFS networks can be disrupted by a state actor and only thing that a state actor like the US may have some trouble with is strong encryption. I assume it's also possible that quantum computers, if and when they materialize at scale, would defeat classical encryption. So my point in putting forward these unverified assumptions is to question whether ANY technology can stand in the way of a determined, major-world-power-type state actor. Personally, I have no reason to believe that's realistic, and all these technologies are toys relative to the billions of dollars in funding that the spy agencies receive.
- Normal_gaussian 10y ago
  It does force the actor to openly be blocking it, which is better than not knowing in that you now have the potential to effect real change.
  - hobofan 10y ago
    Even if openly blocked, the P2P nature allows you to go around any government-controlled devices, given that the network is strong enough.
- weberc2 10y ago
  Probably not, but why make it cheap and easy to do so? Also, there are other bad actors with fewer resources and less-determination than a nation-state.
- placeybordeaux 10y ago
  > I assume it's also possible that quantum computers, if and when they materialize at scale, would defeat classical encryption. Only some existing systems are known to be broken under quantum computing. Then it comes down to the implementation details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography
- lgierth 10y ago
amelius 10y ago
Sounds good, but isn't this a fork of Wikipedia?
- sudhirj 10y ago
  It's a mirror.
  - amelius 10y ago
    In wikipedia, you can view the history of each article by just clicking the "View history" tab. So what exactly is new here?
    - roywiggins 10y ago
      This works even if your ISP is blocking wikipedia.org.
      - amelius 10y ago
        Then you can use Tor. Bonus: it works for other websites too.
slitaz 10y ago
Didn't you mean "unblockable" instead?
- datamonsteryum 10y ago
  Censorship is suppression or prohibition of content. Putting wikipedia on IPFS makes it strongly resistant to many forms of censorship because it uses content-addressing. This means that suppressed content can be redistributed through alternate channels using the same cryptographically verifiable identifier. It also means that you have clarity about which version of the content you're viewing, so if some entity publishes a censored version of your content you have a way to distinguish between the two versions. If you suppress it in one place, people can put it up somewhere else. If you block one path, people can make the content available through another path. If you modify it, people know that you modified it, have clear ways to distinguish between your copy and the unmodified copy, and can request the unmodified version without wondering which version they're getting. If you destroy all the copies on the network, people can add new copies later and all of the existing links will still work. Etc... IPFS can't protect people from a government physically tracking down every copy of the censored content and destroying it -- that requires other efforts external to the protocol (ie. move copies outside their jurisdiction). It does, however, make it possible to move many copies of the content around the world, passing through many hands, serving it through a broad and growing range of paths, without the content losing integrity.
  - threatofrain 10y ago
    Doesn't the scope of your definition also cover cases of academic journals rejecting low quality? They are in essence censoring mere low quality, not even falsehoods. An overly broad scope means that censorship loses its moral oomph.
DonbunEf7 10y ago
Isn't IPFS censorable? That's the impression I got from this FAQ entry: https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/47 https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/47
- zardo 10y ago
  Each node can choose to host (or not host) whatever it chooses. If that qualifies as censorship, you can't _not_ practice censorship. There is no one who can say that something is not allowed on the network. That's not to say you won't face legal or social consequences, IPFS isn't anonymous.
  - DonbunEf7 10y ago
    Compare and contrast with content-neutral networks, for example; we all like 'Net neutrality, right? But IPFS isn't content-neutral. Or content-oblivious networks; we all like Tor and I2P, right? But IPFS isn't content-oblivious. IPFS has all of the tools required for censorious node owners to choose to block content, and the protocol doesn't have any underlying mitigations. It's not hard to imagine, especially in places where there's a monopoly of ISPs, like across large parts of the USA and the Middle East, that IPFS nodes might be easily isolated and vulnerable to relatively straightforward censorship.
    - Kubuxu 10y ago
      Compare it with DNS with HTTP(s) where simple DNS blacklist and/or IP blacklist (DPI in some cases) is all you need. In case of IPFS you can ship HDDs behind the firewall and distribute content internally via local internet, intranets, mesh networks or just by moving files around.
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      Nothing obligates you to use a node which censors. At the same time, a node you own can't unintentionally (as with Freenet) end up with illegal or undesirable content. A tradeoff has to be made. Yes, I censor when I don't pin someone's porn and serve it off my node. At the same time, I'm not preventing anyone else from accessing that information. Another comparison would be to Bittorrent. Given x.torrent, my refusal to share its contents does, in a sense, make me a censor. But my refusal (unless I'm the sole possessor of its contents) doesn't prevent anyone else from sharing it. So the final contents remain uncensored (in the whole). Hell, even freenet "censors" in that infrequently accessed content will eventually stop being replicated within the network.
nathcd 10y ago
I'd be really curious to hear more about how Goal 2 (a full read/write wikipedia) could work. IIRC, writing to the same IPNS address is (or will be?) possible with a private key, so allowing multiple computers to write to files under an IPNS address would require distributing the private key for that address? Also, I wonder how abuse could be dealt with. I've got to imagine that graffiti and malicious edits would be much more rampant without a central server to ban IPs. It seems like a much easier (near-term) solution would be a write-only central server that publishes to an (read-only) IPNS address, where the load could be distributed over IPFS users.
- cjbprime 10y ago
  I think the real problem with a decentralized read/write Wikipedia is conflict resolution (conflicting edits). Having a centralized site to handle those is extremely useful.
  - heliumcraft 10y ago
    Those can be handled in a decentralized consensus system such as Ethereum.
    - nathcd 10y ago
      "Just Add a Blockchain." The universal solution.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      That's a voting mechanism. How do nodes decide which version to vote for?
      - terhechte 10y ago
        There'd be no voting. By using contracts you could simply lock an article while it is being edited, much like it happens on Wikipedia already. Ethereum computes all "code" all the time on all nodes and makes sure that all nodes come to the same result. Thus, you can write one Wikipedia that runs in a distributed manner while still acting like one centralised application
cjbprime 10y ago
Strategically, this (advertising IPFS as an anti-censorship tool and publishing censored documents on it and blogging about them) doesn't seem like a great idea right now. Most people aren't running IPFS nodes, and IPFS isn't seen yet as a valuable resource by censors. So they'll probably just block the whole domain, and now people won't know about or download IPFS. We saw this progression with GitHub in China. They were blocked regularly, perhaps in part for allowing GreatFire to host there, but eventually GitHub's existence became more valuable to China than blocking it was. That was the point at which I think that, if you're GitHub, you can start advertising openly about your role in evading censorship, if you want to. But doing it here at this time in IPFS's growth just seems like risking that growth in censored countries for no good reason.
- Normal_gaussian 10y ago
  This is a very good point. However the benefits of content addressing are so great in terms of performance that I doubt it is possible to prevent it.
  - maxfurman 10y ago
    This view seems optimistic. I think you are overestimating the role of technical factors in political decisions.
    - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
      The technical factors are actually key to the political decision. Content addressing will occur at the browser level in order to improve caching behaviours, this will be implemented by organisations who are part of a political sphere (google, mozilla, apple) whose influence is largely determined by their technical performance. It is then a minor matter for it to move forward into a larger addressing scheme (likely to occur at the same time). IPFS is approaching the issue from the opposite direction of course, but the two are so tightly coupled that I doubt there will be much risk. IPFS is most likely to fail for any technical problems it may have.
eberkund 10y ago
These distributed file systems are really interesting. I'm curious to know if there is anything in the works to also distribute the compute and database engines required to host dynamic content. Something like combining IPFS with Golem (GNT).
- nannal 10y ago
  I guess this is a chance for me to plug https://ipfsstore.it https://ipfsstore.it It was a weekend project I knocked up about a month ago. In short, you can pay 4 cents a month (in Bitcoin) per gb to have my ipfs node pin your files.
  - goodplay 10y ago
    If I may ask, do those 4 cents include bitcoin's transaction fee? How well have bitcoin transactions worked for you so far? I've been pondering starting a cheap service that accepts bitcoin (too cheap for CCs and not worth the hassle of paypal), but wasn't sure about the viability of relying on bitcoin as the primary transaction currency.
    - nannal 10y ago
      4 cents don't include transaction fee, however payments to the service can be slow and don't require inclusion in the first block so they can very very cheap. Bitcoin transactions in testing have worked perfectly & the display is zero conf which means you can pay and see that the payment on the hash the minute. Customer uptake has been lacking for my project, but I believe that's because I've created something that works really well for two very niche markets (which fortunately have a lot of overlap.) depending on what your project is, you can always add a credit system whereby people can dump $5 or something via credit card and you allocate that to them for them to spend as and when they need.
      - goodplay 10y ago
        Thank you for the detailed response. I don't have any working knowledge on how bitcoin is practically used as a currency, so your comment provides insight that's very valuable to someone like me. Zero-confirmation transaction seem like the perfect solution for an infrequent, low value service that can sink more than a couple of fraudulent transactions. You have my thanks! A note on ipfsstore: while ipfsstore provides a very valuable service for those who know why such a a service would be used, the website provides no real information for those who don't already have that prior knowledge. What little information it has is tucked away on a separate page. I think if you clearly advertised the primary value that your service provides (offsite data redundancy/replication) on your landing page, you might see more uptake. If IPFS and bitcoin ever hit critical mass, I think you'll end up with a surprisingly lucrative venture on your hands.
maaaats 10y ago
When browsing the content, how does linking work? I mean, don't they kinda have to link to a hash? But how can they know the hash of a page when the links of that page are dependent on the other pages and this may be a circle?
- lgierth 10y ago
  It's just simple relative links. If you're in /ipfs/QmPage/wiki/Page.html, then a link to './OtherPage.html' will result in /ipfs/QmPage/wiki/OtherPage.html.
  - maaaats 10y ago
    Ah, so the hash is for the whole wiki, and not a single page? Edit, more info here, at part 2 https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5bgFYiZ1/its-time-for-the-permanent-web.html https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5...
    - mintplant 10y ago
      Bingo. Then you have IPNS, which uses a public/private key system to broadcast updates to a mutable hash value. So you can take the IPNS public key for so-and-so's Wikipedia mirror, query the network for the latest hash signed by the corresponding private key, and use that hash to fetch content from IPFS.
Spooky23 10y ago
Why bother with a technological anti-censorship solution for Wikipedia when the obvious solution is to just attack the content directly. If a censoring body wants some information gone, just devote some attention to lobbying the various gatekeepers in Wikipedia.
pavement 10y ago
Listen, I get that there are other parts of the world experiencing serious "technical difficulties" lately... But I can only read English! Where's the English version? https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmT5NvUtoM5nWFfrQdVrFtvGfKFmG7AHE8P34isapyhCxX/wiki/Anasayfa.html https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmT5NvUtoM5nWFfrQdVrFtvGfKFmG7AHE8P34is... This hash doesn't do much for me: QmT5NvUtoM5nWFfrQdVrFtvGfKFmG7AHE8P34isapyhCxX How do I find the version I want? If I can't read it in my language, it's still censored for me.
- lgierth 10y ago
  English is coming in the next few days, along with Kurdish and Arabic
- datamonsteryum 10y ago
  As the blog post says, the english version is coming but it's 20x lager than the Turkish version so it's taking longer to add.
  - Kubuxu 10y ago
    To be precise it is 20x larger than (Turkish + Arabic + Kurdish). It is just big but we will handle it.
- adultSwim 10y ago
  > Where's the English version? https://en.wikipedia.org https://en.wikipedia.org :P
TekMol 10y ago
How is Wikipedia censored in Turkey? Are providers threatened to be punished if they resolve DNS queries for wikipedia.org? Or are they threatened to be punished if they transport TCP/IP packets with IPs that belong to Wikipedia? Wouldn't both be trivial to go around? For DNS, one could simply use a DNS server outside Turkey. For TCP/IP packets, one could set up a $5 proxy on any provider from around the world.
- hollander 10y ago
  This probably happens a lot. The people who have the technical knowledge, and probably are educated and know what's going on, they use VPN or a different DNS-server. This has happened before, and Turkey has blocked 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in the past, just for this. But I bet this is not about the people that can circumvent this. It's for the people outside of the cities, the ones who don't have this knowledge. It's meant to make sure they don't know what's going on. That's more important than convincing the people that can't be convinced.
  - panzer_wyrm 10y ago
    It is the same in China. The government does not try to clamp down too hard on vpn in Shanghai, Beijing etc. They are worried about the people in the midland. Same is with Erdogan - he will never control Istanbul and Ismir. He is worried about his base - the pious, hard working, conservative people in the countryside getting the wrong ideas. The moment a place has big international airport it is lost to cosmopolitanism. There is different Teheran lurking under the hijab. And a wild guess Jeddah and Saudi Aramco headquarters. So dictators grudgingly secede cultural control in the cuties that are gates to the outsude world, trade and riches, as long as they can control the heartlands.
- raldu 10y ago
  Yes, it would be trivial to go around. But that's not the point. It used to be case that people with technical knowledge got around DNS blocks by simply changing the DNS servers. Today you cannot access to Wikipedia even with, say, OpenDNS because now some popular DNS providers are being "hjacked" in Turkey [1]. Yes, hjacking. The key concern is the fact that an Internet service provider employs an illegal hacking technique under the pressure of a totalitarian government to censor the largest and most collaborative information repository of the whole human history just to cover one article mentioning the truth about that totalitarianism. Do not think it is too far of a dystopia for the "more advanced" countries like U.S., especially with Trump. https://bgpmon.net/turkey-hijacking-ip-addresses-for-popular-global-dns-providers/ https://bgpmon.net/turkey-hijacking-ip-addresses-for-popular...
y7 10y ago
Does IPFS work properly with Tor these days? Last I checked support was experimental at best. Without proper support of an anonymity overlay, using Tor to get around your government's censor doesn't sound like a very wise idea.
- lgierth 10y ago
  Currently I'd advice against directly running IPFS over Tor or I2P, because it'll likely leak your IP addresess. OpenBazaar have successfully made it work as an Onion service, and their work is going to be upstreamed into go-ipfs soon.
forvelin 10y ago
At this moment, it is enough to use Google DNS or some VPN to reach Wikipedia in Turkey. This is good case, but IPFS is just an overkill.
- alwillis 10y ago
  >This is good case, but IPFS is just an overkill. Perhaps but it also seems to be a test. IPFS allows the Turkish version of Wikipedia to be available even if there’s no access to the internet backbone. That’s a game-changer for residents of repressive regimes; they just need a snapshot of the content they care about and distribute it via ad hoc networks and even sneaker net, making it nearly impossible for the government to stop. That’s a big deal.
- alwillis 10y ago
  Lets not forget that after Trump was inaugurated, lots of data regarding climate change started to be removed from government controlled websites. As we know, lots of scientists backed up lots of that data; IPFS would have been a great way to backup and distribute the data.
  - Kubuxu 10y ago
    As far as I know there are people that are interested in putting this data on IPFS, it didn't happen yet as right now the focus is to rescue, save and archive this data. Redistributing it comes after it is safe and sound.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    The bottleneck wasn't accessing the data once it had been archived, but archiving it in the first place. Both source and capture bandwidth are finite resources. Several people with considerable infrastructure (a friend in Finland working at a major network provider is among the archivists) were supporting the effort. The limit is how quickly they can peel data off the source. A few station wagons (or SUVs) full of SATA or Blu-RAY drives might be even more useful.
LoSboccacc 10y ago
> In short, content on IPFS is harder to attack and easier to distribute because it’s peer-to-peer and decentralized. > port 4001 is what swarm port IPFS uses to communicate with other nodes uhm.
- Kubuxu 10y ago
  And it can be any other port, any other transport that is implemented/there are adapters for and so on.
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    and how do you find peers then?
    - Kubuxu 10y ago
      Same way Torrent protocol does and with mDNS.
      - LoSboccacc 10y ago
        mDNS traffic is very easy to pick and filter. probably you're thinking dht, but even then, you can block the primed node list or just ask any other client which ip are on the network and block those. this is not the average sysad we're talking, it's a state actor with access to all local isps resources.
        whyrusleeping 10y ago
        Yes, DHT, mdns (for local nets), and manual connections via `ipfs swarm connect`. You can get a peers address through any other open means of communication, connect to them, and then through them, get other peers information. All it takes is one good node
k26dr 10y ago
The following command will allow you to pin (ie. seed/mirror) the site on your local IPFS node if you'd like to contribute to keeping the site up: ipfs pin add QmT5NvUtoM5nWFfrQdVrFtvGfKFmG7AHE8P34isapyhCxX
- whyrusleeping 10y ago
  I also recommend the `--progress` flag to get a bit of feedback.
badsectoracula 10y ago
Correct me if i'm wrong, but if accessing some content through IPFS makes you a provider for that content doesn't that mean that you are essentially announcing to the world that you accessed the content, which in turn can be used by those who do not want you to access it for targeting you? In other words, if someone from Turkey (or China or wherever) uses IPFS to bypass censored content, wouldn't it be trivial for the Turkish/Chinese/etc government to make a list with every single person (well, IP) that accessed that content?
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  As far as I understand the protocol itself is detectable and censorable both passively and actively, so it's not real anti-censorship in any way. Just a tool that hasn't been added to censoring DPIs yet.
  - lgierth 10y ago
    IPFS can work just fine peer-to-peer over Websockets though, which pretty much look like a regular HTTPS connection. Other applications can make use of this too thanks to go-libp2p and js-libp2p.
    - perfmode 10y ago
      Is there a feasible alternative to the standard bootstrapping method? What's the plan for when bad actors block access to the bootstrap nodes?
      - lgierth 10y ago
        Right now it's just a static list of addresses, but there's definitely more planned. One of the current discussions: https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/3908 https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/3908
- derefr 10y ago
  Yes; IPFS is essentially Freenet with the obscuring-content-origin bits turned off. If you want anonymous IPFS, use Freenet.
davidcollantes 10y ago
Will it be available if the domain (ipfs.io) stops resolving, gets seised or is blocked?
- lgierth 10y ago
  Through IPFS yes -- the blog post describes how to, among other things.
devsigner 10y ago
Here it is on Archive.is just for good measure and posterity purposes: https://archive.is/GnjGT https://archive.is/GnjGT
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
smsm42 10y ago
Ironically, I've just discovered that https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ has certificate signed by StartCom, known for being source of fake certificates for prominent domains[1]. So in order to work around censorship, I have to go to site which to establish trust relies on a provider known for providing fake certificates. D'oh. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StartCom#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StartCom#Criticism
- zrth 10y ago
  Even more funny: There are individuals out there trying to help others. HN's top replies are sarcastic and critical. Hope the poor devs don't see this thread today. If so, thanks so much for the awesome technology!
  - whyrusleeping 10y ago
    :)
  - smsm42 10y ago
    I'm not sure how pointing out a security flaw contradicts helping others. Do you think if people try to help others, nobody should point out their mistakes? Are you also against submitting bug reports to projects that you consider good and only send them to the most evil ones?
mirimir 10y ago
Some additional information may help in the duty vs prudence debate. It's true that IPFS gateways can be blocked. But as noted, anyone can create gateways, IPFS works in partitioned networks, and content can be shared via sneakernet. Content can also be shared among otherwise partitioned networks by any node that bridges them. For example, it's easy to create nodes on both the open Internet and the private Tor OnionCat IPv6 /48. That should work for any overlay network. And once nodes on such partitioned networks pin content, outside connections are irrelevant. Burst sharing is also possible. Using MPTCP with OnionCat, one can reach 50 Mbps via Tor.[0,1] 0) https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUDV2KHrAgs84oUc7z9zQmZ3whx1NB6YDPv8ZRuf4dutN/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUDV2KHrAgs84oUc7z9zQmZ3whx1NB6YDPv8ZR... 1) https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSp8p6d3Gxxq1mCVG85jFHMax8pSBzdAyBL2jZxCcCLBL https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSp8p6d3Gxxq1mCVG85jFHMax8pSBzdAyBL2jZ...
awqrre 10y ago
until they create laws...
onetwoname 10y ago
How about you remove all the lies from wikipedia, the lies curated by CIA. No? Oh, right, I forgot you only make the illusion of justice.
onetwoname 10y ago
How about you remove all the lies from wikipedia, the lies curated by CIA. No? Oh, right, I forgot you only make the illusion of justice.
TheMechanix 10y ago
Talk about "alternate facts." This is as alternate as they will get without ivacy vpn, tor or IPFS. China's been trying to do the same, maybe going a step pfurther than both Turkey and Russia
BradyDale 10y ago
Thanks for sharing this... FWIW, I wrote a story about it on Observer.com http://observer.com/2017/05/turkey-wikipedia-ipfs/ http://observer.com/2017/05/turkey-wikipedia-ipfs/

692 points by bpierre 10y ago

captn3m0 10y ago

The SSL cert chain is broken for me.

lgierth 10y ago
What client and error? Works here and ssllabs.com has always turned up good results. Maybe it's the fact it's (still) a StartSSL cert?
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Yes, that's probably it. [1] [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new-wosign-and-startcom-certificates/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new...
iRobbery 10y ago
startcom CA, i've noticed this seems broken more often. Maybe not included in all CA-Cert collections for some operating systems.
- dspillett 10y ago
  startcom and wosign (startcom is now owned by wosign) certificates signed after a certain date are not trusted by some browsers by default due to the back-dating issue last year. Because of the same trust issues some organisations have their OS and browser installations configured to not trust any certificate signed by startcom or wosign (or a certificate that chains to one of theirs).
  - Kubuxu 10y ago
    Gentoo is one of distributions that distrusted startcom and wosign certs completely not following any depreciation paths.
Kubuxu 10y ago
We wanted to switch long time ago to Let's Encrypt, unfortunately it isn't that simple when you have 10ths of domains and subdomains, distributed among 5-10 servers.
dodgedcactii 10y ago
Nope.

hd4 10y ago

Maybe a very dumb question, but why didn't they build anonymity into it rather than advise users to route it over Tor? My guess is it may have something to do with the Unix philosophy. It's still a great tool regardless.

problems 10y ago
IPFS isn't designed for anonymity, it's designed for performance. If you want a similar tool designed for anonymity, Freenet is it.
whyrusleeping 10y ago
Building anonymity into a tool is not trivial. Doing it right is very hard. Doing it right also has significant drawbacks in terms of performance for people who don't need anonyminity. Tor is a great, well studied and well supported way for people to browse anonymously, so yeah, definitely a bit of the unix philosophy in there. That said, we plan on building anonymity tooling into ipfs in the future, its just non-trivial.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lgierth 10y ago
  @whyrusleeping is right, and adding to that, there's a work-in-progress Onion transport which is already being used by OpenBazaar in their fork of go-ipfs. The respective work on making IPFS's routing work safely in an anonymous use case will be upstreamed soon.
placeybordeaux 10y ago
Why build something that is very hard to get right if there's already a way to accomplish what you want?
Nokinside 10y ago
Building anonymity to every tool provides less anonymity than building tools for anonymity that work with multiple protocols and applications. It's better to use ipfs trough I2P or Tor if you need anonymity and hide your actions in larger traffic.

kibwen 10y ago

But Wikipedia allows user edits, and so is inherently censorable. You don't need to block the site, you can just sneak in propaganda a little at a time.

devwastaken 10y ago
That is significantly harder to do.
dmix 10y ago
That's a casual reductionist definition of censorship. Community edited wiki != Censorship Centrally administered information channels == Censorship The state has equal power as citizens to make edits. Meanwhile the state has exclusive power to shut down network access, persecute people for publishing edits or providing access to censored information, chilling effects, etc. Pretty big difference.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  That really depends on the community and the nature of their editing. What if Westboro Baptist Church members decided to do nothing but en-masse gradually edit their Wikipedia page? You would probably categorize their actions as an attempt at propaganda and censorship. (On a short term, of course.) It ultimately wouldn't work, since they are such a small group. However, if a large enough segment of the populace decided on a program like this, which also included an infiltration of the higher-level of Wikipedia's organization, such a program would probably work.
  - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
    Content addressing means that all versions of the page remain available so long as one node hosts it, and they are easily differentiated. On the internet 1000 voices don't speak 1000 times louder than one, it would be relatively easy for a small group to widely advertise that there is a discrepancy. Effective propaganda would only be possible where any contradictions are unable to provide evidence, causing an appeal to authority to become one of the most viable means of resolving the dispute. This is where the majority - but not all - of our current propaganda sits. IPFS would help. It wouldn't solve disinformation but it would tidy up the game.

treytrey 10y ago

I'm not sure this thought makes sense, but just putting it out there for rebuttals and to understand what is really possible: I assume IPFS networks can be disrupted by a state actor and only thing that a state actor like the US may have some trouble with is strong encryption. I assume it's also possible that quantum computers, if and when they materialize at scale, would defeat classical encryption. So my point in putting forward these unverified assumptions is to question whether ANY technology can stand in the way of a determined, major-world-power-type state actor. Personally, I have no reason to believe that's realistic, and all these technologies are toys relative to the billions of dollars in funding that the spy agencies receive.

Normal_gaussian 10y ago
It does force the actor to openly be blocking it, which is better than not knowing in that you now have the potential to effect real change.
- hobofan 10y ago
  Even if openly blocked, the P2P nature allows you to go around any government-controlled devices, given that the network is strong enough.
weberc2 10y ago
Probably not, but why make it cheap and easy to do so? Also, there are other bad actors with fewer resources and less-determination than a nation-state.
placeybordeaux 10y ago
> I assume it's also possible that quantum computers, if and when they materialize at scale, would defeat classical encryption. Only some existing systems are known to be broken under quantum computing. Then it comes down to the implementation details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography
lgierth 10y ago

amelius 10y ago

Sounds good, but isn't this a fork of Wikipedia?

sudhirj 10y ago
It's a mirror.
- amelius 10y ago
  In wikipedia, you can view the history of each article by just clicking the "View history" tab. So what exactly is new here?
  - roywiggins 10y ago
    This works even if your ISP is blocking wikipedia.org.
    - amelius 10y ago
      Then you can use Tor. Bonus: it works for other websites too.

slitaz 10y ago

Didn't you mean "unblockable" instead?

datamonsteryum 10y ago
Censorship is suppression or prohibition of content. Putting wikipedia on IPFS makes it strongly resistant to many forms of censorship because it uses content-addressing. This means that suppressed content can be redistributed through alternate channels using the same cryptographically verifiable identifier. It also means that you have clarity about which version of the content you're viewing, so if some entity publishes a censored version of your content you have a way to distinguish between the two versions. If you suppress it in one place, people can put it up somewhere else. If you block one path, people can make the content available through another path. If you modify it, people know that you modified it, have clear ways to distinguish between your copy and the unmodified copy, and can request the unmodified version without wondering which version they're getting. If you destroy all the copies on the network, people can add new copies later and all of the existing links will still work. Etc... IPFS can't protect people from a government physically tracking down every copy of the censored content and destroying it -- that requires other efforts external to the protocol (ie. move copies outside their jurisdiction). It does, however, make it possible to move many copies of the content around the world, passing through many hands, serving it through a broad and growing range of paths, without the content losing integrity.
- threatofrain 10y ago
  Doesn't the scope of your definition also cover cases of academic journals rejecting low quality? They are in essence censoring mere low quality, not even falsehoods. An overly broad scope means that censorship loses its moral oomph.

DonbunEf7 10y ago

Isn't IPFS censorable? That's the impression I got from this FAQ entry: https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/47 https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/47

zardo 10y ago
Each node can choose to host (or not host) whatever it chooses. If that qualifies as censorship, you can't _not_ practice censorship. There is no one who can say that something is not allowed on the network. That's not to say you won't face legal or social consequences, IPFS isn't anonymous.
- DonbunEf7 10y ago
  Compare and contrast with content-neutral networks, for example; we all like 'Net neutrality, right? But IPFS isn't content-neutral. Or content-oblivious networks; we all like Tor and I2P, right? But IPFS isn't content-oblivious. IPFS has all of the tools required for censorious node owners to choose to block content, and the protocol doesn't have any underlying mitigations. It's not hard to imagine, especially in places where there's a monopoly of ISPs, like across large parts of the USA and the Middle East, that IPFS nodes might be easily isolated and vulnerable to relatively straightforward censorship.
  - Kubuxu 10y ago
    Compare it with DNS with HTTP(s) where simple DNS blacklist and/or IP blacklist (DPI in some cases) is all you need. In case of IPFS you can ship HDDs behind the firewall and distribute content internally via local internet, intranets, mesh networks or just by moving files around.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    Nothing obligates you to use a node which censors. At the same time, a node you own can't unintentionally (as with Freenet) end up with illegal or undesirable content. A tradeoff has to be made. Yes, I censor when I don't pin someone's porn and serve it off my node. At the same time, I'm not preventing anyone else from accessing that information. Another comparison would be to Bittorrent. Given x.torrent, my refusal to share its contents does, in a sense, make me a censor. But my refusal (unless I'm the sole possessor of its contents) doesn't prevent anyone else from sharing it. So the final contents remain uncensored (in the whole). Hell, even freenet "censors" in that infrequently accessed content will eventually stop being replicated within the network.

nathcd 10y ago

I'd be really curious to hear more about how Goal 2 (a full read/write wikipedia) could work. IIRC, writing to the same IPNS address is (or will be?) possible with a private key, so allowing multiple computers to write to files under an IPNS address would require distributing the private key for that address? Also, I wonder how abuse could be dealt with. I've got to imagine that graffiti and malicious edits would be much more rampant without a central server to ban IPs. It seems like a much easier (near-term) solution would be a write-only central server that publishes to an (read-only) IPNS address, where the load could be distributed over IPFS users.

cjbprime 10y ago
I think the real problem with a decentralized read/write Wikipedia is conflict resolution (conflicting edits). Having a centralized site to handle those is extremely useful.
- heliumcraft 10y ago
  Those can be handled in a decentralized consensus system such as Ethereum.
  - nathcd 10y ago
    "Just Add a Blockchain." The universal solution.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    That's a voting mechanism. How do nodes decide which version to vote for?
    - terhechte 10y ago
      There'd be no voting. By using contracts you could simply lock an article while it is being edited, much like it happens on Wikipedia already. Ethereum computes all "code" all the time on all nodes and makes sure that all nodes come to the same result. Thus, you can write one Wikipedia that runs in a distributed manner while still acting like one centralised application

cjbprime 10y ago

Strategically, this (advertising IPFS as an anti-censorship tool and publishing censored documents on it and blogging about them) doesn't seem like a great idea right now. Most people aren't running IPFS nodes, and IPFS isn't seen yet as a valuable resource by censors. So they'll probably just block the whole domain, and now people won't know about or download IPFS. We saw this progression with GitHub in China. They were blocked regularly, perhaps in part for allowing GreatFire to host there, but eventually GitHub's existence became more valuable to China than blocking it was. That was the point at which I think that, if you're GitHub, you can start advertising openly about your role in evading censorship, if you want to. But doing it here at this time in IPFS's growth just seems like risking that growth in censored countries for no good reason.

Normal_gaussian 10y ago
This is a very good point. However the benefits of content addressing are so great in terms of performance that I doubt it is possible to prevent it.
- maxfurman 10y ago
  This view seems optimistic. I think you are overestimating the role of technical factors in political decisions.
  - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
    The technical factors are actually key to the political decision. Content addressing will occur at the browser level in order to improve caching behaviours, this will be implemented by organisations who are part of a political sphere (google, mozilla, apple) whose influence is largely determined by their technical performance. It is then a minor matter for it to move forward into a larger addressing scheme (likely to occur at the same time). IPFS is approaching the issue from the opposite direction of course, but the two are so tightly coupled that I doubt there will be much risk. IPFS is most likely to fail for any technical problems it may have.

eberkund 10y ago

These distributed file systems are really interesting. I'm curious to know if there is anything in the works to also distribute the compute and database engines required to host dynamic content. Something like combining IPFS with Golem (GNT).

nannal 10y ago
I guess this is a chance for me to plug https://ipfsstore.it https://ipfsstore.it It was a weekend project I knocked up about a month ago. In short, you can pay 4 cents a month (in Bitcoin) per gb to have my ipfs node pin your files.
- goodplay 10y ago
  If I may ask, do those 4 cents include bitcoin's transaction fee? How well have bitcoin transactions worked for you so far? I've been pondering starting a cheap service that accepts bitcoin (too cheap for CCs and not worth the hassle of paypal), but wasn't sure about the viability of relying on bitcoin as the primary transaction currency.
  - nannal 10y ago
    4 cents don't include transaction fee, however payments to the service can be slow and don't require inclusion in the first block so they can very very cheap. Bitcoin transactions in testing have worked perfectly & the display is zero conf which means you can pay and see that the payment on the hash the minute. Customer uptake has been lacking for my project, but I believe that's because I've created something that works really well for two very niche markets (which fortunately have a lot of overlap.) depending on what your project is, you can always add a credit system whereby people can dump $5 or something via credit card and you allocate that to them for them to spend as and when they need.
    - goodplay 10y ago
      Thank you for the detailed response. I don't have any working knowledge on how bitcoin is practically used as a currency, so your comment provides insight that's very valuable to someone like me. Zero-confirmation transaction seem like the perfect solution for an infrequent, low value service that can sink more than a couple of fraudulent transactions. You have my thanks! A note on ipfsstore: while ipfsstore provides a very valuable service for those who know why such a a service would be used, the website provides no real information for those who don't already have that prior knowledge. What little information it has is tucked away on a separate page. I think if you clearly advertised the primary value that your service provides (offsite data redundancy/replication) on your landing page, you might see more uptake. If IPFS and bitcoin ever hit critical mass, I think you'll end up with a surprisingly lucrative venture on your hands.

maaaats 10y ago

When browsing the content, how does linking work? I mean, don't they kinda have to link to a hash? But how can they know the hash of a page when the links of that page are dependent on the other pages and this may be a circle?

lgierth 10y ago
It's just simple relative links. If you're in /ipfs/QmPage/wiki/Page.html, then a link to './OtherPage.html' will result in /ipfs/QmPage/wiki/OtherPage.html.
- maaaats 10y ago
  Ah, so the hash is for the whole wiki, and not a single page? Edit, more info here, at part 2 https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5bgFYiZ1/its-time-for-the-permanent-web.html https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5...
  - mintplant 10y ago
    Bingo. Then you have IPNS, which uses a public/private key system to broadcast updates to a mutable hash value. So you can take the IPNS public key for so-and-so's Wikipedia mirror, query the network for the latest hash signed by the corresponding private key, and use that hash to fetch content from IPFS.

Spooky23 10y ago

Why bother with a technological anti-censorship solution for Wikipedia when the obvious solution is to just attack the content directly. If a censoring body wants some information gone, just devote some attention to lobbying the various gatekeepers in Wikipedia.

pavement 10y ago

Listen, I get that there are other parts of the world experiencing serious "technical difficulties" lately... But I can only read English! Where's the English version? https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmT5NvUtoM5nWFfrQdVrFtvGfKFmG7AHE8P34isapyhCxX/wiki/Anasayfa.html https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmT5NvUtoM5nWFfrQdVrFtvGfKFmG7AHE8P34is... This hash doesn't do much for me: QmT5NvUtoM5nWFfrQdVrFtvGfKFmG7AHE8P34isapyhCxX How do I find the version I want? If I can't read it in my language, it's still censored for me.

lgierth 10y ago
English is coming in the next few days, along with Kurdish and Arabic
datamonsteryum 10y ago
As the blog post says, the english version is coming but it's 20x lager than the Turkish version so it's taking longer to add.
- Kubuxu 10y ago
  To be precise it is 20x larger than (Turkish + Arabic + Kurdish). It is just big but we will handle it.
adultSwim 10y ago
> Where's the English version? https://en.wikipedia.org https://en.wikipedia.org :P

TekMol 10y ago

How is Wikipedia censored in Turkey? Are providers threatened to be punished if they resolve DNS queries for wikipedia.org? Or are they threatened to be punished if they transport TCP/IP packets with IPs that belong to Wikipedia? Wouldn't both be trivial to go around? For DNS, one could simply use a DNS server outside Turkey. For TCP/IP packets, one could set up a $5 proxy on any provider from around the world.

hollander 10y ago
This probably happens a lot. The people who have the technical knowledge, and probably are educated and know what's going on, they use VPN or a different DNS-server. This has happened before, and Turkey has blocked 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in the past, just for this. But I bet this is not about the people that can circumvent this. It's for the people outside of the cities, the ones who don't have this knowledge. It's meant to make sure they don't know what's going on. That's more important than convincing the people that can't be convinced.
- panzer_wyrm 10y ago
  It is the same in China. The government does not try to clamp down too hard on vpn in Shanghai, Beijing etc. They are worried about the people in the midland. Same is with Erdogan - he will never control Istanbul and Ismir. He is worried about his base - the pious, hard working, conservative people in the countryside getting the wrong ideas. The moment a place has big international airport it is lost to cosmopolitanism. There is different Teheran lurking under the hijab. And a wild guess Jeddah and Saudi Aramco headquarters. So dictators grudgingly secede cultural control in the cuties that are gates to the outsude world, trade and riches, as long as they can control the heartlands.
raldu 10y ago
Yes, it would be trivial to go around. But that's not the point. It used to be case that people with technical knowledge got around DNS blocks by simply changing the DNS servers. Today you cannot access to Wikipedia even with, say, OpenDNS because now some popular DNS providers are being "hjacked" in Turkey [1]. Yes, hjacking. The key concern is the fact that an Internet service provider employs an illegal hacking technique under the pressure of a totalitarian government to censor the largest and most collaborative information repository of the whole human history just to cover one article mentioning the truth about that totalitarianism. Do not think it is too far of a dystopia for the "more advanced" countries like U.S., especially with Trump. https://bgpmon.net/turkey-hijacking-ip-addresses-for-popular-global-dns-providers/ https://bgpmon.net/turkey-hijacking-ip-addresses-for-popular...

y7 10y ago

Does IPFS work properly with Tor these days? Last I checked support was experimental at best. Without proper support of an anonymity overlay, using Tor to get around your government's censor doesn't sound like a very wise idea.

lgierth 10y ago
Currently I'd advice against directly running IPFS over Tor or I2P, because it'll likely leak your IP addresess. OpenBazaar have successfully made it work as an Onion service, and their work is going to be upstreamed into go-ipfs soon.

forvelin 10y ago

At this moment, it is enough to use Google DNS or some VPN to reach Wikipedia in Turkey. This is good case, but IPFS is just an overkill.

alwillis 10y ago
>This is good case, but IPFS is just an overkill. Perhaps but it also seems to be a test. IPFS allows the Turkish version of Wikipedia to be available even if there’s no access to the internet backbone. That’s a game-changer for residents of repressive regimes; they just need a snapshot of the content they care about and distribute it via ad hoc networks and even sneaker net, making it nearly impossible for the government to stop. That’s a big deal.
alwillis 10y ago
Lets not forget that after Trump was inaugurated, lots of data regarding climate change started to be removed from government controlled websites. As we know, lots of scientists backed up lots of that data; IPFS would have been a great way to backup and distribute the data.
- Kubuxu 10y ago
  As far as I know there are people that are interested in putting this data on IPFS, it didn't happen yet as right now the focus is to rescue, save and archive this data. Redistributing it comes after it is safe and sound.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  The bottleneck wasn't accessing the data once it had been archived, but archiving it in the first place. Both source and capture bandwidth are finite resources. Several people with considerable infrastructure (a friend in Finland working at a major network provider is among the archivists) were supporting the effort. The limit is how quickly they can peel data off the source. A few station wagons (or SUVs) full of SATA or Blu-RAY drives might be even more useful.

LoSboccacc 10y ago

> In short, content on IPFS is harder to attack and easier to distribute because it’s peer-to-peer and decentralized. > port 4001 is what swarm port IPFS uses to communicate with other nodes uhm.

Kubuxu 10y ago
And it can be any other port, any other transport that is implemented/there are adapters for and so on.
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  and how do you find peers then?
  - Kubuxu 10y ago
    Same way Torrent protocol does and with mDNS.
    - LoSboccacc 10y ago
      mDNS traffic is very easy to pick and filter. probably you're thinking dht, but even then, you can block the primed node list or just ask any other client which ip are on the network and block those. this is not the average sysad we're talking, it's a state actor with access to all local isps resources.
      - whyrusleeping 10y ago
        Yes, DHT, mdns (for local nets), and manual connections via `ipfs swarm connect`. You can get a peers address through any other open means of communication, connect to them, and then through them, get other peers information. All it takes is one good node

k26dr 10y ago

The following command will allow you to pin (ie. seed/mirror) the site on your local IPFS node if you'd like to contribute to keeping the site up: ipfs pin add QmT5NvUtoM5nWFfrQdVrFtvGfKFmG7AHE8P34isapyhCxX

whyrusleeping 10y ago
I also recommend the `--progress` flag to get a bit of feedback.

badsectoracula 10y ago

Correct me if i'm wrong, but if accessing some content through IPFS makes you a provider for that content doesn't that mean that you are essentially announcing to the world that you accessed the content, which in turn can be used by those who do not want you to access it for targeting you? In other words, if someone from Turkey (or China or wherever) uses IPFS to bypass censored content, wouldn't it be trivial for the Turkish/Chinese/etc government to make a list with every single person (well, IP) that accessed that content?

zzzcpan 10y ago
As far as I understand the protocol itself is detectable and censorable both passively and actively, so it's not real anti-censorship in any way. Just a tool that hasn't been added to censoring DPIs yet.
- lgierth 10y ago
  IPFS can work just fine peer-to-peer over Websockets though, which pretty much look like a regular HTTPS connection. Other applications can make use of this too thanks to go-libp2p and js-libp2p.
  - perfmode 10y ago
    Is there a feasible alternative to the standard bootstrapping method? What's the plan for when bad actors block access to the bootstrap nodes?
    - lgierth 10y ago
      Right now it's just a static list of addresses, but there's definitely more planned. One of the current discussions: https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/3908 https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/3908
derefr 10y ago
Yes; IPFS is essentially Freenet with the obscuring-content-origin bits turned off. If you want anonymous IPFS, use Freenet.

davidcollantes 10y ago

Will it be available if the domain (ipfs.io) stops resolving, gets seised or is blocked?

lgierth 10y ago
Through IPFS yes -- the blog post describes how to, among other things.

devsigner 10y ago

Here it is on Archive.is just for good measure and posterity purposes: https://archive.is/GnjGT https://archive.is/GnjGT

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

smsm42 10y ago

Ironically, I've just discovered that https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ has certificate signed by StartCom, known for being source of fake certificates for prominent domains[1]. So in order to work around censorship, I have to go to site which to establish trust relies on a provider known for providing fake certificates. D'oh. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StartCom#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StartCom#Criticism

zrth 10y ago
Even more funny: There are individuals out there trying to help others. HN's top replies are sarcastic and critical. Hope the poor devs don't see this thread today. If so, thanks so much for the awesome technology!
- whyrusleeping 10y ago
  :)
- smsm42 10y ago
  I'm not sure how pointing out a security flaw contradicts helping others. Do you think if people try to help others, nobody should point out their mistakes? Are you also against submitting bug reports to projects that you consider good and only send them to the most evil ones?

mirimir 10y ago

Some additional information may help in the duty vs prudence debate. It's true that IPFS gateways can be blocked. But as noted, anyone can create gateways, IPFS works in partitioned networks, and content can be shared via sneakernet. Content can also be shared among otherwise partitioned networks by any node that bridges them. For example, it's easy to create nodes on both the open Internet and the private Tor OnionCat IPv6 /48. That should work for any overlay network. And once nodes on such partitioned networks pin content, outside connections are irrelevant. Burst sharing is also possible. Using MPTCP with OnionCat, one can reach 50 Mbps via Tor.[0,1] 0) https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUDV2KHrAgs84oUc7z9zQmZ3whx1NB6YDPv8ZRuf4dutN/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUDV2KHrAgs84oUc7z9zQmZ3whx1NB6YDPv8ZR... 1) https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSp8p6d3Gxxq1mCVG85jFHMax8pSBzdAyBL2jZxCcCLBL https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSp8p6d3Gxxq1mCVG85jFHMax8pSBzdAyBL2jZ...

awqrre 10y ago

until they create laws...

onetwoname 10y ago

How about you remove all the lies from wikipedia, the lies curated by CIA. No? Oh, right, I forgot you only make the illusion of justice.

onetwoname 10y ago

How about you remove all the lies from wikipedia, the lies curated by CIA. No? Oh, right, I forgot you only make the illusion of justice.

TheMechanix 10y ago

Talk about "alternate facts." This is as alternate as they will get without ivacy vpn, tor or IPFS. China's been trying to do the same, maybe going a step pfurther than both Turkey and Russia

BradyDale 10y ago

Thanks for sharing this... FWIW, I wrote a story about it on Observer.com http://observer.com/2017/05/turkey-wikipedia-ipfs/ http://observer.com/2017/05/turkey-wikipedia-ipfs/