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I don't see the value in a high profile stolen domain for a trader. Anyone have any ideas on why this would be financially worthwhile? I am assuming financial m

I don't see the value in a high profile stolen domain for a trader. Anyone have any ideas on why this would be financially worthwhile? I am assuming financial motives.

briantakita 8y ago
It would be valuable for a large entity to censor content that would make it look bad; by disrupting operations & breaking existing links to content.
- dane-pgp 8y ago
  This looks like a job for: Blockchain! Seriously, though, imagine a public, distributed, append-only log, containing the hashes of the content stored by archive.is, with the data effectively signed by a (e.g. wallet) private key of the archive maintainers. People could volunteer to locally store copies of all the data that was archived, but only serve the data that goes "missing" from archive.is. With such a dead man's switch in place, there would be no harm in archive.is taking down any content that they were threatened (legally or otherwise) over, and then other sites (hopefully too many to attack) could publish the taken down content, alongside the cryptographic proof that the data was originally published by archive.is. You're right though that there would still be disruption, as the original archive.is links would (in the worst case) return unhelpful error pages.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    or archive.is could just post regular signed backups. No need for blockchain, as there is no need to form a consensus in this case.
    - dane-pgp 8y ago
      Yes, regular signed backups would be almost as good. What a blockchain adds is the inability to fraudulently backdate material (in case a key was compromised) and a financial incentive for making sure that at least the existence of the hash remains a public record (unless the value of the entire blockchain becomes zero, which is more likely for some blockchains than others). I suppose I'm inspired by this idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6aiysw/the_whole_internet_archive_timestamped_with/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6aiysw/the_whole_i...
      - beaconstudios 8y ago
        a blockchain doesn't uniquely add that - there are cryptographic constructs that prevent that sort of attack, such as (I believe, I'm not a cryptographer) merkle trees that enforce a causal ordering. Really, the cost of a blockchain massively outweighs the value it brings to the table. The only instance where a blockchain is needed is where you need a tamper-proof distributed consensus between untrusted parties.
        dane-pgp 8y ago
        Yes, you can create a merkle tree which enforces a causal ordering, but anyone with the (potentially compromised) key can generate such a tree with whatever ordering they want (or missing items). I concede, though, that the existence of multiple signed orderings would at least prove that the key had been compromised. You're also right that there is a huge cost to creating a secure blockchain from scratch, but the incremental cost of using an already secure public blockchain (such as Ethereum's) can be lower than the amount of value it brings to the table. Proving the existence of data, at specific timestamps in the past, when keys may have later been compromised, does seem like a use case that requires tamper-proof distributed consensus between untrusted parties. Whether that use case is particularly valuable or not is harder to judge, though, I admit.
  - skywhopper 8y ago
    This misses the point of censorship. A party determined to sow misinformation can hijack a domain to do so. All the blockchain in the world won't solve that problem.
    - MorrisofOrange 8y ago
      That why we will solve censorship by mining my blockchain node hash with a sharding fork! /s
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      it's hilarious, to underscore the fragility of the conventional domain name system under pressure of politics and money, and portray it as an argument against blockchains,... this is literally what Namecoin (probably the second significant blockchain proposal) was designed for! of course lots of time has past now, and better mechanisms have been formalized (especially Algorand)...
keketi 8y ago
Maybe it's an attempt at blackmailing to get something deleted? 31 Jan 2018, "I will make a donation every month. Please delete what we ask": https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/958760127359840257 https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/958760127359840257
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- samstave 8y ago
  Serious question, in that thread some guy is attempting to have an old blog with his face pic deleted... id suport that. But then if some other news or political or corporate arm was seeking to get something deleted to prevent them from looking bad, then im against it... So what is the middle ground here, or how should one view this dilema?
  - centering 8y ago
    Archive.is is notorious for not deleting anything. Not even a dox with SSN and more.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    You can't un-ring a bell.
    - NotAnEconomist 8y ago
      That's not an excuse for other people to sit there re-broadcasting it. There's a strong case to be made that we're actually substantially better off with certain kinds of information having a generally ephemeral and hard-to-collect nature.
    - lilyball 8y ago
      That doesn't really justify the decision to continue publishing private information. Just because someone somewhere may have access to it doesn't mean you need to make it easier for everyone to have access to it.
bitwize 8y ago
Sounds like someone really wants to push the narrative that, say, Zoe Quinn is a genius game designer and an innocent victim of targeted harassment, not a horrid person who herself organized harassment mobs against people she disagreed with -- and is running into the problem of all that pesky evidence to the contrary getting in the way.
- cazum 8y ago
  There are many more obvious reasons why someone might want to seize an archive domain without needing to delve into ridiculous gamer gate conspiracy theories. Besides, stealing the domain doesn't delete any content on the servers.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    The best information about Zoe Quinn is on Kiwi Farms, where the posters tend not to take sides in GG -- and they use archive.is extensively. It doesn't have to be Zoe specifically -- KF is full of profiles on people who would really rather not have their public internet activity preserved because it's so damning. Stealing the domain wouldn't make the content go away, but it would invalidate all the links which have been already posted.
    - cazum 8y ago
      A single line unix command run on KiwiFarm's servers could replace every instance of "archive.is" with "archive.today" in posts. Nobody is going to attempt a high profile take over like this for something that can be circumvented in minutes by a half-asleep sysadmin. Also, for anyone not aware KiwiFarms is a notoriously shitty forum that publically stalk, dox, slander and harass people online. If you need evidence, just go read the forum post and kf wiki page about her. They repeatedly make unsourced claims, insults, editorial opinions about her motives, wild speculations and just outright lies. At one point the wiki diagnoses her with BPD without evidence. The title on the forum post about her calls her a "Cunt". She's constantly called a con artist without evidence, and is repeatedly accused of somehow forcing bored white teenage boys to harass her for years by "baiting her own harassment" At best, it's unjournalistic garbage and at worst it's actual gang stalking. I don't know you personally, bitwize, but I know you're better than this trash.
alecco 8y ago
It could be a large organization who is upset for some links archived. Taking .is would make existing links break. Or big media upset with view hijacking. Or it could just be malware. Whatever the reason, it's terrible.

I don't see the value in a high profile stolen domain for a trader. Anyone have any ideas on why this would be financially worthwhile? I am assuming financial motives.

briantakita 8y ago

It would be valuable for a large entity to censor content that would make it look bad; by disrupting operations & breaking existing links to content.

dane-pgp 8y ago
This looks like a job for: Blockchain! Seriously, though, imagine a public, distributed, append-only log, containing the hashes of the content stored by archive.is, with the data effectively signed by a (e.g. wallet) private key of the archive maintainers. People could volunteer to locally store copies of all the data that was archived, but only serve the data that goes "missing" from archive.is. With such a dead man's switch in place, there would be no harm in archive.is taking down any content that they were threatened (legally or otherwise) over, and then other sites (hopefully too many to attack) could publish the taken down content, alongside the cryptographic proof that the data was originally published by archive.is. You're right though that there would still be disruption, as the original archive.is links would (in the worst case) return unhelpful error pages.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  or archive.is could just post regular signed backups. No need for blockchain, as there is no need to form a consensus in this case.
  - dane-pgp 8y ago
    Yes, regular signed backups would be almost as good. What a blockchain adds is the inability to fraudulently backdate material (in case a key was compromised) and a financial incentive for making sure that at least the existence of the hash remains a public record (unless the value of the entire blockchain becomes zero, which is more likely for some blockchains than others). I suppose I'm inspired by this idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6aiysw/the_whole_internet_archive_timestamped_with/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6aiysw/the_whole_i...
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      a blockchain doesn't uniquely add that - there are cryptographic constructs that prevent that sort of attack, such as (I believe, I'm not a cryptographer) merkle trees that enforce a causal ordering. Really, the cost of a blockchain massively outweighs the value it brings to the table. The only instance where a blockchain is needed is where you need a tamper-proof distributed consensus between untrusted parties.
      - dane-pgp 8y ago
        Yes, you can create a merkle tree which enforces a causal ordering, but anyone with the (potentially compromised) key can generate such a tree with whatever ordering they want (or missing items). I concede, though, that the existence of multiple signed orderings would at least prove that the key had been compromised. You're also right that there is a huge cost to creating a secure blockchain from scratch, but the incremental cost of using an already secure public blockchain (such as Ethereum's) can be lower than the amount of value it brings to the table. Proving the existence of data, at specific timestamps in the past, when keys may have later been compromised, does seem like a use case that requires tamper-proof distributed consensus between untrusted parties. Whether that use case is particularly valuable or not is harder to judge, though, I admit.
- skywhopper 8y ago
  This misses the point of censorship. A party determined to sow misinformation can hijack a domain to do so. All the blockchain in the world won't solve that problem.
  - MorrisofOrange 8y ago
    That why we will solve censorship by mining my blockchain node hash with a sharding fork! /s
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    it's hilarious, to underscore the fragility of the conventional domain name system under pressure of politics and money, and portray it as an argument against blockchains,... this is literally what Namecoin (probably the second significant blockchain proposal) was designed for! of course lots of time has past now, and better mechanisms have been formalized (especially Algorand)...

keketi 8y ago

Maybe it's an attempt at blackmailing to get something deleted? 31 Jan 2018, "I will make a donation every month. Please delete what we ask": https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/958760127359840257 https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/958760127359840257

deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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samstave 8y ago
Serious question, in that thread some guy is attempting to have an old blog with his face pic deleted... id suport that. But then if some other news or political or corporate arm was seeking to get something deleted to prevent them from looking bad, then im against it... So what is the middle ground here, or how should one view this dilema?
- centering 8y ago
  Archive.is is notorious for not deleting anything. Not even a dox with SSN and more.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  You can't un-ring a bell.
  - NotAnEconomist 8y ago
    That's not an excuse for other people to sit there re-broadcasting it. There's a strong case to be made that we're actually substantially better off with certain kinds of information having a generally ephemeral and hard-to-collect nature.
  - lilyball 8y ago
    That doesn't really justify the decision to continue publishing private information. Just because someone somewhere may have access to it doesn't mean you need to make it easier for everyone to have access to it.

bitwize 8y ago

Sounds like someone really wants to push the narrative that, say, Zoe Quinn is a genius game designer and an innocent victim of targeted harassment, not a horrid person who herself organized harassment mobs against people she disagreed with -- and is running into the problem of all that pesky evidence to the contrary getting in the way.

cazum 8y ago
There are many more obvious reasons why someone might want to seize an archive domain without needing to delve into ridiculous gamer gate conspiracy theories. Besides, stealing the domain doesn't delete any content on the servers.
- bitwize 8y ago
  The best information about Zoe Quinn is on Kiwi Farms, where the posters tend not to take sides in GG -- and they use archive.is extensively. It doesn't have to be Zoe specifically -- KF is full of profiles on people who would really rather not have their public internet activity preserved because it's so damning. Stealing the domain wouldn't make the content go away, but it would invalidate all the links which have been already posted.
  - cazum 8y ago
    A single line unix command run on KiwiFarm's servers could replace every instance of "archive.is" with "archive.today" in posts. Nobody is going to attempt a high profile take over like this for something that can be circumvented in minutes by a half-asleep sysadmin. Also, for anyone not aware KiwiFarms is a notoriously shitty forum that publically stalk, dox, slander and harass people online. If you need evidence, just go read the forum post and kf wiki page about her. They repeatedly make unsourced claims, insults, editorial opinions about her motives, wild speculations and just outright lies. At one point the wiki diagnoses her with BPD without evidence. The title on the forum post about her calls her a "Cunt". She's constantly called a con artist without evidence, and is repeatedly accused of somehow forcing bored white teenage boys to harass her for years by "baiting her own harassment" At best, it's unjournalistic garbage and at worst it's actual gang stalking. I don't know you personally, bitwize, but I know you're better than this trash.

alecco 8y ago

It could be a large organization who is upset for some links archived. Taking .is would make existing links break. Or big media upset with view hijacking. Or it could just be malware. Whatever the reason, it's terrible.