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Another thought experiment: What would happen if someone encoded something horrible and illegal like child porn into a blockchain? Is everyone who operates on

Another thought experiment: What would happen if someone encoded something horrible and illegal like child porn into a blockchain? Is everyone who operates on that chain guilty of possession? Does that make a specific crypto "illegal" if its blockchain contains illegal content?

lostmsu 5y ago
If you extend it wide enough, one should ban natural numbers because some of them in binary form are identical to child pornography video files.
- dkokelley 5y ago
  Take a look at “illegal numbers” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number Copied from another comment: ======= There’s the concept of “illegal numbers”, which means that there are technically numeric representations of images or copyrighted material that you can’t know/possess without breaking a law. But the law is subjective which is why we have judges and juries to apply judgement to whether having a large number written on a piece of paper is equivalent to possessions illegal material.
- dorgo 5y ago
  And don't forget random number generators. They are just evil sometimes.
  - ntauthority 5y ago
    It is amazing that the output of a random number generator can be considered a core part of a DMCA-style 'illegal to work around' anti-circumvention solution.
tick_tock_tick 5y ago
People already added it into bitcoin if you stretch the definition a bit. As in the bits needed to reconstruct the image exist in the chain.
- dkokelley 5y ago
  Really? That’s very sad, but I’m not too surprised. (Unless you’re saying that the bits 0 and 1 already exist in the blockchain, which is reaaaaallllyyy stretching the definition.) There’s the concept of “illegal numbers”, which means that there are technically numeric representations of images or copyrighted material that you can’t know/possess without breaking a law. But the law is subjective which is why we have judges and juries to apply judgement to whether having a large number written on a piece of paper is equivalent to possessing illegal material.
- sneak 5y ago
  > People already added it into bitcoin if you stretch the definition a bit. Which is a fancy way of saying that they haven't. The only images in the bitcoin blockchain are ascii art. There are plenty of hashes of different types of data in the bitcoin blockchain, but hashes are not the hash function's input data. Schneier himself repeated this bogus "there's illegal content in the bitcoin blockchain already!" claim, which shows the legs this false meme has on it. Please stop repeating this falsehood.
  - dkokelley 5y ago
    I agree that a hash of data != the source data, but these links seem to indicate that it is at least possible, if not already evident, that illegal images and content can be encoded into the bitcoin blockchain (and presumably other blockchains that permit similar writing to the ledger) JPG of Nelson Mandela encoded into bitcoin blockchain: http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photo... Illegal porn and classified documents embedded in the blockchain (page 3): https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/pdf-33/accenture-editing-uneditable-blockchain.pdf https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/pdf-33/accenture-editing... Original research source: https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf
  - userbinator 5y ago
    The data may may have been encrypted with a key that only some people know, and to others it's just random noise. By that definition, however, every file could be transformed into an illegal one through a suitable cipher and key. Then there's the concept of steganography. Digital data is interesting for sure.

lostmsu 5y ago

If you extend it wide enough, one should ban natural numbers because some of them in binary form are identical to child pornography video files.

dkokelley 5y ago
Take a look at “illegal numbers” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number Copied from another comment: ======= There’s the concept of “illegal numbers”, which means that there are technically numeric representations of images or copyrighted material that you can’t know/possess without breaking a law. But the law is subjective which is why we have judges and juries to apply judgement to whether having a large number written on a piece of paper is equivalent to possessions illegal material.
dorgo 5y ago
And don't forget random number generators. They are just evil sometimes.
- ntauthority 5y ago
  It is amazing that the output of a random number generator can be considered a core part of a DMCA-style 'illegal to work around' anti-circumvention solution.

tick_tock_tick 5y ago

People already added it into bitcoin if you stretch the definition a bit. As in the bits needed to reconstruct the image exist in the chain.

dkokelley 5y ago
Really? That’s very sad, but I’m not too surprised. (Unless you’re saying that the bits 0 and 1 already exist in the blockchain, which is reaaaaallllyyy stretching the definition.) There’s the concept of “illegal numbers”, which means that there are technically numeric representations of images or copyrighted material that you can’t know/possess without breaking a law. But the law is subjective which is why we have judges and juries to apply judgement to whether having a large number written on a piece of paper is equivalent to possessing illegal material.
sneak 5y ago
> People already added it into bitcoin if you stretch the definition a bit. Which is a fancy way of saying that they haven't. The only images in the bitcoin blockchain are ascii art. There are plenty of hashes of different types of data in the bitcoin blockchain, but hashes are not the hash function's input data. Schneier himself repeated this bogus "there's illegal content in the bitcoin blockchain already!" claim, which shows the legs this false meme has on it. Please stop repeating this falsehood.
- dkokelley 5y ago
  I agree that a hash of data != the source data, but these links seem to indicate that it is at least possible, if not already evident, that illegal images and content can be encoded into the bitcoin blockchain (and presumably other blockchains that permit similar writing to the ledger) JPG of Nelson Mandela encoded into bitcoin blockchain: http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photo... Illegal porn and classified documents embedded in the blockchain (page 3): https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/pdf-33/accenture-editing-uneditable-blockchain.pdf https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/pdf-33/accenture-editing... Original research source: https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf
- userbinator 5y ago
  The data may may have been encrypted with a key that only some people know, and to others it's just random noise. By that definition, however, every file could be transformed into an illegal one through a suitable cipher and key. Then there's the concept of steganography. Digital data is interesting for sure.