5 ms·

I wonder if you could take a middle step, and host a community-run server for youtube-dl itself; run YouTube-mp3 on an anonymous and decentralized server. Perha

I wonder if you could take a middle step, and host a community-run server for youtube-dl itself; run YouTube-mp3 on an anonymous and decentralized server. Perhaps Ethereum is the right technology for this. Would something like that be possible with Ethereum or otherwise blockchains in general?

pavel_lishin 9y ago
I don't understand blockchain technology in depth, but my understanding is that writing to the blockchain is usually not particularly cheap or fast, especially when writing large amounts of data. A blockchain that fills up with terabytes of pirated movies or mp3s would become difficult to operate, wouldn't it?
- saalweachter 9y ago
  You'd be using some sort of filecoin-like storage system, where you pay people for distributed storage. If I've been following the whole Ethereum thing correctly, as an outsider who kind of looks down on it, this is right up it's alley. You write some sort of smart contract which allows for the uploading and downloading of music blobs, charges for the service, and if insufficient coins are garnered for storage deletes the least used files. I don't think you need a server or any such thing, and the only way to force a take down would be to take down the underlying services.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > I don't think you need a server or any such thing, and the only way to force a take down would be to take down the underlying services. What's to stop the MPAA/RIAA and ISPs from just suing everyone on the network who's hosting part of the file? If they can sue bittorrent users, what's the significant legal difference here?
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      There's probably nothing to stop them, but it's way more hilarious. Anonymous internet people start using the networks for various flavors of illegal file storage, and various innocent network operators just trying to sell shovels in a gold rush or run a simple pyramid scam start getting sued by the RIAA or prosecuted by the FBI, while the original uploaders (or even the smart contracts to maintain and index the uploads) are dust in the wind.
      - pavel_lishin 9y ago
        I don't think I'd call random innocent people getting served with lawsuits "hilarious".
        saalweachter 9y ago
        It's hilarious because people have been jumping into running services without necessarily considering the legal liabilities they've been signing up for. It's like if someone started a point-to-point delivery business where they take anonymous, secure packages between different places, no questions asked, and then are surprised when the police show up and say they're pretty sure that a good portion of the packages they've been carrying are drugs and pipe bombs, and ask them to roll on their clients, or at least stop delivering packages. And then the delivery man tries to make a philosophical argument that they aren't morally or legally responsible for the contents of their packages, and in any case it really shouldn't be illegal to distribute drugs or pipe bombs.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Why not just use spotify? If you are building a commercial service a blockchain just complicates matters and gives no benefit. If you are building a piracy service a blockchain just complicates things and adds no value. A pretty good rule of thumb is that if you can replace block chain with a database or anything else and lose no functionality, not to mention remove the whole thing together and simplify your solution it's not block chain but bullshit.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      > Why not just use spotify? Spotify doesn't have the music I want to listen to.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

I don't understand blockchain technology in depth, but my understanding is that writing to the blockchain is usually not particularly cheap or fast, especially when writing large amounts of data. A blockchain that fills up with terabytes of pirated movies or mp3s would become difficult to operate, wouldn't it?

saalweachter 9y ago
You'd be using some sort of filecoin-like storage system, where you pay people for distributed storage. If I've been following the whole Ethereum thing correctly, as an outsider who kind of looks down on it, this is right up it's alley. You write some sort of smart contract which allows for the uploading and downloading of music blobs, charges for the service, and if insufficient coins are garnered for storage deletes the least used files. I don't think you need a server or any such thing, and the only way to force a take down would be to take down the underlying services.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > I don't think you need a server or any such thing, and the only way to force a take down would be to take down the underlying services. What's to stop the MPAA/RIAA and ISPs from just suing everyone on the network who's hosting part of the file? If they can sue bittorrent users, what's the significant legal difference here?
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    There's probably nothing to stop them, but it's way more hilarious. Anonymous internet people start using the networks for various flavors of illegal file storage, and various innocent network operators just trying to sell shovels in a gold rush or run a simple pyramid scam start getting sued by the RIAA or prosecuted by the FBI, while the original uploaders (or even the smart contracts to maintain and index the uploads) are dust in the wind.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      I don't think I'd call random innocent people getting served with lawsuits "hilarious".
      - saalweachter 9y ago
        It's hilarious because people have been jumping into running services without necessarily considering the legal liabilities they've been signing up for. It's like if someone started a point-to-point delivery business where they take anonymous, secure packages between different places, no questions asked, and then are surprised when the police show up and say they're pretty sure that a good portion of the packages they've been carrying are drugs and pipe bombs, and ask them to roll on their clients, or at least stop delivering packages. And then the delivery man tries to make a philosophical argument that they aren't morally or legally responsible for the contents of their packages, and in any case it really shouldn't be illegal to distribute drugs or pipe bombs.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Why not just use spotify? If you are building a commercial service a blockchain just complicates matters and gives no benefit. If you are building a piracy service a blockchain just complicates things and adds no value. A pretty good rule of thumb is that if you can replace block chain with a database or anything else and lose no functionality, not to mention remove the whole thing together and simplify your solution it's not block chain but bullshit.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > Why not just use spotify? Spotify doesn't have the music I want to listen to.