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With all this talk about various corporations policing copyright, censoring political content, and whatnot, I think it's only a matter of time until someone mak

With all this talk about various corporations policing copyright, censoring political content, and whatnot, I think it's only a matter of time until someone makes an anonymous blockchain content aggregator that's impossible to censor. Then when it becomes the modern equivalent of Usenet/IRC/Napster/PirateBay, people will just shrug and say "don't blame the protocol". The demand exists and the technology exists, but nobody has put them together yet.

tsimionescu 6y ago
There's no such thing as 'impossible to censor'. It may eb 'hard to censor', perhaps even 'impractical to censor', but a powerful enough government will be able to censor anything it wants. Do your think that, if people started somehow publishing 'bad' stories about the CCP in the bit coin block chain, the CCP wouldn't act to remove that content or censor any acces to the block chain itself?
- tomjen3 6y ago
  CPP might be able to ban access to the block chain, or some part of it, but they wouldn't be able to replace it with their own version that was accepted outside China.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Would they need to? If they're controlling what their populace can and cannot see that's at least 51% of their goal, isn't it?
ebiester 6y ago
Why bother with blockchain? This is a torrent use case because nobody wants to share their record of porn ownership.
- CoolGuySteve 6y ago
  Torrent aggregator sites/discords have small groups of people behind them to arrest or sue. A blockchain would have a large impractical group of people to arrest or sue, it would be like when the RIAA tried to sue Kazaa users.
  - oivey 6y ago
    It’s unclear how this is true. You would still need tools to search the blockchain for the content you’re looking for. Someone would also need to curate and coordinate the format for embedding this information. Anyone involved with either of those steps could be targeted. Those are just off the top of my head. There are likely more holes than that.
  - dasudasu 6y ago
    It’s not a tech issue. You can target anyone that’s part of a disaggregated network and broadcasts it. That’s true for torrents, TOR nodes, or blockchains.
    - CoolGuySteve 6y ago
      That's exactly my point, at some point the legal system doesn't scale as well as the technology.
astrange 6y ago
Wouldn’t your blockchain be several PB in size right away, immediately censoring itself because nobody could store it?
- nickelcitymario 6y ago
  What if it was only a directory of torrents? Not hosting the content itself, but indexing it. (I've never developed anything with blockchain or torrents, so my apologies if there's a technical reason why this sucks.) If I understand Pirate Bay and other torrent sites correctly, they don't host any content. They just index what's available P2P. I'm not sure how large that index would become, but I could imagine chunking the index itself out so that it doesn't take much room on any one user's machine. The chunking of the index could theoretically be done in such a way that no individual chunk would have any useable information, so no individual user could be accused of linking to illegal content. (I think that's conceivable? Again, not sure.) (Please note: This is pure hypotheticals. I have zero interest in seeing such a system come about.)
  - YokoZar 6y ago
    You're about 50% of the way to reinventing 2000s era peer to peer filesharing programs here.
    - nickelcitymario 6y ago
      ...you're not wrong.
  - laumars 6y ago
    Indexing has always been the easy part. It’s the hosting that’s the real problem. With hosting, you can either have it centralised so users are anonymised from each other (but it’s easier to take down centralised repositories) or decentralised but where users can see each other (but then it’s easier for copyright holders to go after individuals). You can’t really have it both decentralised and anonymous.
wmf 6y ago
Freenet has existed for a long time but it hasn't really taken off.
cool_dude85 6y ago
What happens when someone uploads their illegal porn to the blockchain aggregator and it can't be taken down? It seems like there's a strong need to censor things like video and photo sharing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jokethrowaway 6y ago
A blockchain doesn't make it impossible to censor. To be honest, I wonder why western governments don't ban cryptocurrencies. They make tax collection harder and help criminals collect money. Plus that would be a blow for countries that are investing tons of money in it eg China, which is destroying the rest of the world, economy-wise. There is the possibility that western governments are already under Chinese influence, I guess, but I wasn't definitely expecting BTC to survive so long. Especially because governments are not even benefiting from cryptos.

tsimionescu 6y ago

There's no such thing as 'impossible to censor'. It may eb 'hard to censor', perhaps even 'impractical to censor', but a powerful enough government will be able to censor anything it wants. Do your think that, if people started somehow publishing 'bad' stories about the CCP in the bit coin block chain, the CCP wouldn't act to remove that content or censor any acces to the block chain itself?

tomjen3 6y ago
CPP might be able to ban access to the block chain, or some part of it, but they wouldn't be able to replace it with their own version that was accepted outside China.
- pc86 6y ago
  Would they need to? If they're controlling what their populace can and cannot see that's at least 51% of their goal, isn't it?

ebiester 6y ago

Why bother with blockchain? This is a torrent use case because nobody wants to share their record of porn ownership.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago
Torrent aggregator sites/discords have small groups of people behind them to arrest or sue. A blockchain would have a large impractical group of people to arrest or sue, it would be like when the RIAA tried to sue Kazaa users.
- oivey 6y ago
  It’s unclear how this is true. You would still need tools to search the blockchain for the content you’re looking for. Someone would also need to curate and coordinate the format for embedding this information. Anyone involved with either of those steps could be targeted. Those are just off the top of my head. There are likely more holes than that.
- dasudasu 6y ago
  It’s not a tech issue. You can target anyone that’s part of a disaggregated network and broadcasts it. That’s true for torrents, TOR nodes, or blockchains.
  - CoolGuySteve 6y ago
    That's exactly my point, at some point the legal system doesn't scale as well as the technology.

astrange 6y ago

Wouldn’t your blockchain be several PB in size right away, immediately censoring itself because nobody could store it?

nickelcitymario 6y ago
What if it was only a directory of torrents? Not hosting the content itself, but indexing it. (I've never developed anything with blockchain or torrents, so my apologies if there's a technical reason why this sucks.) If I understand Pirate Bay and other torrent sites correctly, they don't host any content. They just index what's available P2P. I'm not sure how large that index would become, but I could imagine chunking the index itself out so that it doesn't take much room on any one user's machine. The chunking of the index could theoretically be done in such a way that no individual chunk would have any useable information, so no individual user could be accused of linking to illegal content. (I think that's conceivable? Again, not sure.) (Please note: This is pure hypotheticals. I have zero interest in seeing such a system come about.)
- YokoZar 6y ago
  You're about 50% of the way to reinventing 2000s era peer to peer filesharing programs here.
  - nickelcitymario 6y ago
    ...you're not wrong.
- laumars 6y ago
  Indexing has always been the easy part. It’s the hosting that’s the real problem. With hosting, you can either have it centralised so users are anonymised from each other (but it’s easier to take down centralised repositories) or decentralised but where users can see each other (but then it’s easier for copyright holders to go after individuals). You can’t really have it both decentralised and anonymous.

wmf 6y ago

Freenet has existed for a long time but it hasn't really taken off.

cool_dude85 6y ago

What happens when someone uploads their illegal porn to the blockchain aggregator and it can't be taken down? It seems like there's a strong need to censor things like video and photo sharing.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

jokethrowaway 6y ago

A blockchain doesn't make it impossible to censor. To be honest, I wonder why western governments don't ban cryptocurrencies. They make tax collection harder and help criminals collect money. Plus that would be a blow for countries that are investing tons of money in it eg China, which is destroying the rest of the world, economy-wise. There is the possibility that western governments are already under Chinese influence, I guess, but I wasn't definitely expecting BTC to survive so long. Especially because governments are not even benefiting from cryptos.