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This makes sense but...I'm being fully serious and earnest here and revealing my own naïveté: Couldn't some form of blockchain work here? Like couldn't some fo

This makes sense but...I'm being fully serious and earnest here and revealing my own naïveté: Couldn't some form of blockchain work here? Like couldn't some form of distributed/democratized community curation and moderation happen by using the blockchain to manage the arbitration of new torrents (and their successors, like when the community decides New Random Anime X encoding to be a superior copy)? Plus you have proof of stake or whatever the leading mechanism is to help combat and filter out fakes/illegal activity (etc)? Then you'd have blockchain managing the trackers and torrents managing the file sharing.

Xen9 3y ago
Freenet works this way. I would replace all torrents with Freenet(s) but the technology seems to be too obscure to be comfortable for large audiences.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  It's also not capable of handling this kind of volume. IPFS might be a more modern alternative but it has similar issues. It's used for fairly small files such as books (libgen) but not really for movies. Edit: Or do you man the torrent files only? That might work but they really are just links, it might be a bit overkill for them.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Not just the technology, if Freenet is still like it was when I tried it years ago (?), the "front page" is full of sites clearly being for pedophiles and fascists. Kind of tends to put you off, you know ?
nopcode 3y ago
This happened in the dutch usenet piracy community. Downloading happened over usenet, but curation and discussion on a centralised website. The site got seized and the community moved to a new forum that runs on usenet itself. Blockchain is overkill here - don't need a coin or stake or whatever
- wkat4242 3y ago
  > Downloading happened over usenet, but curation and discussion on a centralised website. The site got seized and the community moved to a new forum that runs on usenet itself. True, it worked really well for a while but lately it's been pretty terrible due to local copyright representatives suing major uploaders and others stopping because they just got old. Also the notice & takedown has really killed usenet a bit. Private trackers are hard to get into just like with torrents.
6510 3y ago
It's therapeutic, people use whatever is available to them. Having a struggle at the edge allows people to do the busy work they bill for while not accomplishing anything meaningful. Technical folk will find new ways to keep their thing going. If to many websites are gone people will move to a new formula (new to them) The network of sharing software and movies is much older than the internet. Eventually you just purchase a preloaded data carrier from your local pot dealer. The drives are so large, the formula would go dramatically faster than BitTorrent. Shipping [say] 10 kg worth of data carriers is amazingly cheap. Looking at some random portable drive 10 kg box / 0.265 kg = 37 drives and 37 * 5 TB = 185 TB ? Something like 100 000 to 400 000 hours of film. Good for a maximum fine in "lost revenue" of $ 1 000 000 000 000 for the single box. There is a lengthy therapeutic treatment program between that stage and the torrent websites. Eventually some bean counter will discover crowd sourcing Police Academy 8 and people will just give them money provided they desire to see it. Star citizen raised over $569 million. On the most profitable movies list nr 191 is Fifty Shades of Grey with $569 million from a budget of 40 million. I can see the problem, with crowd sourcing it would be like normal work. That extra 500 million would be unlikely. They would have to make 10 movies.
theptip 3y ago
What you propose sounds broadly like it could easily be built on IPFS and Filecoin. I think you find that there isn’t enough financial incentive to go decentralized here; groups get together and host/curate for community and kudos more than for profit.
unixhero 3y ago
How would they? Torrents are fairly trivial to build a web site around. Blockchain sounds lile experimental engineering
- Solvency 3y ago
  I asked because the original question was around centralization (a tracker website) being the weak link in the chain. I suppose you could build a very simple decentralized voting system / index of sorts... but it wouldn't be a centralized hosted online "website" (..right?)
  - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
    Tracker websites are hardly centralized. There are thousands (millions?) to choose from.
maeln 3y ago
Bitcoin is going to be 15 years old soon and aside from this original usage, no real usage has really taken off for "blockchain" technologies (and no, I am not counting the occasional pump and dump / virtual scarcity scheme as a real usage of the tech). We really have to stop asking this question. And I say this having had some involvement with some web3 projects/company. Even if it is theoretically possible, it create a huge barrier for entry, a lot of user friction, issue with governance and distribution of power, exploit, etc. And it is extremely hard to put in place for something that can be replaced by a generic phpBB forum in an afternoon. It is like trying to make a ICBM to kill a fly.
- latchkey 3y ago
  > no real usage has really taken off for "blockchain" technologies (and no, I am not counting the occasional pump and dump / virtual scarcity scheme as a real usage of the tech) In the Bitcoin world, Ordinals have started to make waves as they are a creative use of unintended consequences. This will likely spur other innovations. In the EVM world, DeFi is still used all the time. It lost a lot of steam from the last bull run, but trading, be your own bank, interest arbitrage, options, perps, all of that is still going on quite a bit. New sites are popping up all the time. LybraFinance LUSD/eUSD is one of the more recent ones.
  - gobip 3y ago
    Wow. DeFi? Be your own bank? Ordinals? No dear, we are here to hate and give our opinion on something we don't understand!
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  There are plenty of real uses for cryptocurrency that exist in the real world, but most of it is boring stuff: people holding their assets in stablecoins in countries that have capital controls.
  - Valgrim 3y ago
    This is an example of a real, yet illegal use of cryptocurrency (in the sense that it is used to circumvent the local laws). Also said cryptocurrency has to remain hidden like a treasure in a chest inside a secret cave, or it can be seized, and if the owner does not comply with the seizure, he can be jailed.
cirelli94 3y ago
That would be really interesting usage of blockchain!
dmix 3y ago
You could probably accomplish as much just indexing torrents and combining it with an HN style voting system + user profiles. There’s always risk of bad actors but the main thing is having humans in the loop to provide reputation signals.
fallat 3y ago
Cryptocurrency could be used here to both decentralize and incentivize such a system. I think a major hurdle would be the fact torrents have been "free" since their inception. PoS is irrelevant here - it's a mechanism that lives "higher up" to protect the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. Then there's also the social issues and useability issues that plague the space. My best guess is most bittorrent enthusiasts (and myself) would like to see a more natural solution to the decentralization problem. "Natural" being incentives which arise around sharing / not sharing and similar, vs straight up money incentives. A reputation system could work but again, Sybil attacks could happen. So some how the network needs to figure out a way to make certain actions more expensive in the large.

Xen9 3y ago

Freenet works this way. I would replace all torrents with Freenet(s) but the technology seems to be too obscure to be comfortable for large audiences.

wkat4242 3y ago
It's also not capable of handling this kind of volume. IPFS might be a more modern alternative but it has similar issues. It's used for fairly small files such as books (libgen) but not really for movies. Edit: Or do you man the torrent files only? That might work but they really are just links, it might be a bit overkill for them.
BlueTemplar 3y ago
Not just the technology, if Freenet is still like it was when I tried it years ago (?), the "front page" is full of sites clearly being for pedophiles and fascists. Kind of tends to put you off, you know ?

nopcode 3y ago

This happened in the dutch usenet piracy community. Downloading happened over usenet, but curation and discussion on a centralised website. The site got seized and the community moved to a new forum that runs on usenet itself. Blockchain is overkill here - don't need a coin or stake or whatever

wkat4242 3y ago
> Downloading happened over usenet, but curation and discussion on a centralised website. The site got seized and the community moved to a new forum that runs on usenet itself. True, it worked really well for a while but lately it's been pretty terrible due to local copyright representatives suing major uploaders and others stopping because they just got old. Also the notice & takedown has really killed usenet a bit. Private trackers are hard to get into just like with torrents.

6510 3y ago

It's therapeutic, people use whatever is available to them. Having a struggle at the edge allows people to do the busy work they bill for while not accomplishing anything meaningful. Technical folk will find new ways to keep their thing going. If to many websites are gone people will move to a new formula (new to them) The network of sharing software and movies is much older than the internet. Eventually you just purchase a preloaded data carrier from your local pot dealer. The drives are so large, the formula would go dramatically faster than BitTorrent. Shipping [say] 10 kg worth of data carriers is amazingly cheap. Looking at some random portable drive 10 kg box / 0.265 kg = 37 drives and 37 * 5 TB = 185 TB ? Something like 100 000 to 400 000 hours of film. Good for a maximum fine in "lost revenue" of $ 1 000 000 000 000 for the single box. There is a lengthy therapeutic treatment program between that stage and the torrent websites. Eventually some bean counter will discover crowd sourcing Police Academy 8 and people will just give them money provided they desire to see it. Star citizen raised over $569 million. On the most profitable movies list nr 191 is Fifty Shades of Grey with $569 million from a budget of 40 million. I can see the problem, with crowd sourcing it would be like normal work. That extra 500 million would be unlikely. They would have to make 10 movies.

theptip 3y ago

What you propose sounds broadly like it could easily be built on IPFS and Filecoin. I think you find that there isn’t enough financial incentive to go decentralized here; groups get together and host/curate for community and kudos more than for profit.

unixhero 3y ago

How would they? Torrents are fairly trivial to build a web site around. Blockchain sounds lile experimental engineering

Solvency 3y ago
I asked because the original question was around centralization (a tracker website) being the weak link in the chain. I suppose you could build a very simple decentralized voting system / index of sorts... but it wouldn't be a centralized hosted online "website" (..right?)
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  Tracker websites are hardly centralized. There are thousands (millions?) to choose from.

maeln 3y ago

Bitcoin is going to be 15 years old soon and aside from this original usage, no real usage has really taken off for "blockchain" technologies (and no, I am not counting the occasional pump and dump / virtual scarcity scheme as a real usage of the tech). We really have to stop asking this question. And I say this having had some involvement with some web3 projects/company. Even if it is theoretically possible, it create a huge barrier for entry, a lot of user friction, issue with governance and distribution of power, exploit, etc. And it is extremely hard to put in place for something that can be replaced by a generic phpBB forum in an afternoon. It is like trying to make a ICBM to kill a fly.

latchkey 3y ago
> no real usage has really taken off for "blockchain" technologies (and no, I am not counting the occasional pump and dump / virtual scarcity scheme as a real usage of the tech) In the Bitcoin world, Ordinals have started to make waves as they are a creative use of unintended consequences. This will likely spur other innovations. In the EVM world, DeFi is still used all the time. It lost a lot of steam from the last bull run, but trading, be your own bank, interest arbitrage, options, perps, all of that is still going on quite a bit. New sites are popping up all the time. LybraFinance LUSD/eUSD is one of the more recent ones.
- gobip 3y ago
  Wow. DeFi? Be your own bank? Ordinals? No dear, we are here to hate and give our opinion on something we don't understand!
whimsicalism 3y ago
There are plenty of real uses for cryptocurrency that exist in the real world, but most of it is boring stuff: people holding their assets in stablecoins in countries that have capital controls.
- Valgrim 3y ago
  This is an example of a real, yet illegal use of cryptocurrency (in the sense that it is used to circumvent the local laws). Also said cryptocurrency has to remain hidden like a treasure in a chest inside a secret cave, or it can be seized, and if the owner does not comply with the seizure, he can be jailed.

cirelli94 3y ago

That would be really interesting usage of blockchain!

dmix 3y ago

You could probably accomplish as much just indexing torrents and combining it with an HN style voting system + user profiles. There’s always risk of bad actors but the main thing is having humans in the loop to provide reputation signals.

fallat 3y ago

Cryptocurrency could be used here to both decentralize and incentivize such a system. I think a major hurdle would be the fact torrents have been "free" since their inception. PoS is irrelevant here - it's a mechanism that lives "higher up" to protect the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. Then there's also the social issues and useability issues that plague the space. My best guess is most bittorrent enthusiasts (and myself) would like to see a more natural solution to the decentralization problem. "Natural" being incentives which arise around sharing / not sharing and similar, vs straight up money incentives. A reputation system could work but again, Sybil attacks could happen. So some how the network needs to figure out a way to make certain actions more expensive in the large.