3 ms·

What I think will be an interesting use case for this technology is public file sharing. If I want to share files with the general public I could just give the

What I think will be an interesting use case for this technology is public file sharing. If I want to share files with the general public I could just give them a read-only key and then they'll have a folder that syncs with whatever files I put into it. It's a new way of content distribution. Will this be how people distribute music and TV shows? Will this be the way people subscribe to content in the future? I could be a game developer, and I could give my users a read-only key to download my game and at the same time they'll receive any updates I make to the game when I update the files in the folder.

twoodfin 13y ago
This is indeed a great technology. The "push" analog to the original BitTorrent's "pull". But there's also potential for abuse (or greater freedom depending on how you look at it!). Say I create a sync folder containing a bunch of popular films and then widely distribute the read-only key. Thousands subscribe. Now I have access to what amounts to a botnet that will widely distribute whatever content I see fit to deposit, more or less untraceably because the P2P network is so huge, and I or my co-conspirators can insert or retrieve content from any part of it.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  That sounds like a brilliant thing for free speech, but watch out, I'm not sure there's a guarantee of anonymity in crowds for people who have read-write access, they may be identifiable. Still reading the analysis of the system. Have to read through the spec.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    What are you reading that has the details? It would seem to me that read-only peers would have to have the ability to propagate writes across the network. Why would they have to identify the origin of the change if they obviously have cryptographically secure evidence that the change is valid?

3 ms·

What I think will be an interesting use case for this technology is public file sharing. If I want to share files with the general public I could just give the

by joshaidan 13y ago

twoodfin 13y ago
This is indeed a great technology. The "push" analog to the original BitTorrent's "pull". But there's also potential for abuse (or greater freedom depending on how you look at it!). Say I create a sync folder containing a bunch of popular films and then widely distribute the read-only key. Thousands subscribe. Now I have access to what amounts to a botnet that will widely distribute whatever content I see fit to deposit, more or less untraceably because the P2P network is so huge, and I or my co-conspirators can insert or retrieve content from any part of it.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  That sounds like a brilliant thing for free speech, but watch out, I'm not sure there's a guarantee of anonymity in crowds for people who have read-write access, they may be identifiable. Still reading the analysis of the system. Have to read through the spec.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    What are you reading that has the details? It would seem to me that read-only peers would have to have the ability to propagate writes across the network. Why would they have to identify the origin of the change if they obviously have cryptographically secure evidence that the change is valid?