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Brings up a lot of good points, but his question at the end “Does IPFS mean I may be storing some illegal content originated by other users?” is so off-base, it

by woah 9y ago

Brings up a lot of good points, but his question at the end “Does IPFS mean I may be storing some illegal content originated by other users?” is so off-base, it casts doubt on the whole rest of the post. I only have a passing familiarity with IPFS, but I know that you only store files that you have explicitly chosen to store, or “pinned”. How did the author miss this?

klint 9y ago
It's pretty easy to miss IMHO. The project could probably benefit from having this spelled out on the homepage.
aw3c2 9y ago
I thought content was shared even if not pinned until it is garbage collected?
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  If you've downloaded it, yes. If you run IPFS on your laptop and you haven't viewed some content, you won't be sharing out that content.
- cypherpunks01 9y ago
  Content that is viewed is stored temporarily, yes, not random unvisited content.
ahnick 9y ago
As I understand it though, this wouldn't be the case in the future if one becomes a Filecoin storage provider in which case one could be holding some illegal content. IIRC though some sort of blacklisting protocol will be provided in order to respond to DMCA, NSLs, etc, so I think Filecoin storage providers are covered in that regard.
zekrioca 9y ago
It does not "casts doubt on the whole rest of the post". It is a legitimate question afterall, and the same one faced nowadays with so many files being removed from websites. He questions how could one do it in a decentralized system since copyright issues will show up as well.
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  It's a legitimate question, especially for those familiar with other similar distributed systems. But it's easily answered and the article leaves it unanswered.
  - zekrioca 9y ago
    Fair, but still, it does not "casts doubt on the whole rest of the post".
chc4 9y ago
If you read the white paper, it pretty clearly says that your node will cache files that peers request in order to build reputation on the network. Maybe IPFS doesn't actually do that currently, but it could and the whitepaper says it should, so it is a very valid question to ask. edit: double checked the whitepaper, and it says "In the case that a node has nothing that its peers want (or nothing at all), it seeks the pieces its peers want, with lower priority than what the node wants itself. This incentivizes nodes to cache and disseminate rare pieces, even if they are not interested in them directly."
- edraferi 9y ago
  I believe this is correct. I'm not sure how IPFS addresses this, but one method is to have an oracle that reports DMCA takedowns. Nodes can achieve takedown compliance by subscribing to the blacklist. Obviously there are lots of technical challenges. Just a few: - Who gets to add entries to the blacklist? - How do infringement victims know that's the right person to contact? - How do you avoid creating a central point of failure? (at minimum nodes need ability to choose their blacklist provider) - Since it's all content-addressed, how do you handle near duplicates? e.g. same movie encoded in different formats (basically have to punt on this one unless you implement some kind of contentID, which is a whole other problem) Anyway, you need to have some figleaf policy so people have a clear way to opt-in to compliance. I would be completely skeptical of this approach except that it appears to work for adblockers. Extensions like uBlock Origin let users choose from a several third-party blacklists, with sensible defaults. Of course, there are fewer ad servers than pirate movie copies...
  - amelius 9y ago
    I think it is a non-problem, because the node is just a cache, just like an optic-fiber acts as a cache (you can actually compute the storage capacity of an optic-fiber of a given length using the bitrate and the speed of light). Owners of internet infrastructure (fiber&routers) are never sued for e.g. infringement of copyright, and infrastructure is exactly what an IPFS node is.
    - 9y ago

by woah 9y ago

klint 9y ago

It's pretty easy to miss IMHO. The project could probably benefit from having this spelled out on the homepage.

aw3c2 9y ago

I thought content was shared even if not pinned until it is garbage collected?

Jtsummers 9y ago
If you've downloaded it, yes. If you run IPFS on your laptop and you haven't viewed some content, you won't be sharing out that content.
cypherpunks01 9y ago
Content that is viewed is stored temporarily, yes, not random unvisited content.

ahnick 9y ago

As I understand it though, this wouldn't be the case in the future if one becomes a Filecoin storage provider in which case one could be holding some illegal content. IIRC though some sort of blacklisting protocol will be provided in order to respond to DMCA, NSLs, etc, so I think Filecoin storage providers are covered in that regard.

zekrioca 9y ago

It does not "casts doubt on the whole rest of the post". It is a legitimate question afterall, and the same one faced nowadays with so many files being removed from websites. He questions how could one do it in a decentralized system since copyright issues will show up as well.

Jtsummers 9y ago
It's a legitimate question, especially for those familiar with other similar distributed systems. But it's easily answered and the article leaves it unanswered.
- zekrioca 9y ago
  Fair, but still, it does not "casts doubt on the whole rest of the post".

chc4 9y ago

If you read the white paper, it pretty clearly says that your node will cache files that peers request in order to build reputation on the network. Maybe IPFS doesn't actually do that currently, but it could and the whitepaper says it should, so it is a very valid question to ask. edit: double checked the whitepaper, and it says "In the case that a node has nothing that its peers want (or nothing at all), it seeks the pieces its peers want, with lower priority than what the node wants itself. This incentivizes nodes to cache and disseminate rare pieces, even if they are not interested in them directly."

edraferi 9y ago
I believe this is correct. I'm not sure how IPFS addresses this, but one method is to have an oracle that reports DMCA takedowns. Nodes can achieve takedown compliance by subscribing to the blacklist. Obviously there are lots of technical challenges. Just a few: - Who gets to add entries to the blacklist? - How do infringement victims know that's the right person to contact? - How do you avoid creating a central point of failure? (at minimum nodes need ability to choose their blacklist provider) - Since it's all content-addressed, how do you handle near duplicates? e.g. same movie encoded in different formats (basically have to punt on this one unless you implement some kind of contentID, which is a whole other problem) Anyway, you need to have some figleaf policy so people have a clear way to opt-in to compliance. I would be completely skeptical of this approach except that it appears to work for adblockers. Extensions like uBlock Origin let users choose from a several third-party blacklists, with sensible defaults. Of course, there are fewer ad servers than pirate movie copies...
- amelius 9y ago
  I think it is a non-problem, because the node is just a cache, just like an optic-fiber acts as a cache (you can actually compute the storage capacity of an optic-fiber of a given length using the bitrate and the speed of light). Owners of internet infrastructure (fiber&routers) are never sued for e.g. infringement of copyright, and infrastructure is exactly what an IPFS node is.
  - 9y ago