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Yes, it's been known for a while that people can upload illegal bits into blockchains. Don't think transaction steganography would hold up in court though. You

Yes, it's been known for a while that people can upload illegal bits into blockchains. Don't think transaction steganography would hold up in court though. You could do similar things with DNS records, etc. File storage services though have the added concern that they're specifically designed to distribute files. Filecoin addresses this by (a) encouraging everyone to pre-encrypt before adding, and (b) creating a fluid market based on incentives. Nodes aren't required to store every file, only strongly incentivized to do so. Nodes are free to follow strong counter incentives (say, a well-known list of "illegal hashes" published by authorities). In reality, the way many courts handle things like this is to target the entry points: the websites advertising which are the illegal hashes and how to get them. (e.g. the piratebay instead of bittorrent inc.)

kang 12y ago
Make encryption at source compulsory (since the data is uploaded through your software) and no need to tell the user about it. rather advertise it as a feature.
- swinglock 12y ago
  I agree, this would be the best action for both the user and host. I'd add a check on the host to make sure the data looks random as well to protect against rouge or malfunctioning clients that attempts to store plain text. Encryption must be mandatory and enforced, this will prevent so much pain for all parties.
  - nullc 12y ago
    'looks random' is a pretty bad idea. It will bogusly fire on random files and won't prevent people from just standardizing on a key of 0.
- sp332 12y ago
  But once the protocol is published, it won't be the only client. Other clients will also have to make encryption decisions.
nullc 12y ago
> with DNS records, etc. And classified ads in the news-paper. It certantly easier to make a complicated case the broader the data channel is— so this is just one reason (along with scalability and cost-of-decentralization) that Bitcoin is pretty stingy with sidechannels.

kang 12y ago

Make encryption at source compulsory (since the data is uploaded through your software) and no need to tell the user about it. rather advertise it as a feature.

swinglock 12y ago
I agree, this would be the best action for both the user and host. I'd add a check on the host to make sure the data looks random as well to protect against rouge or malfunctioning clients that attempts to store plain text. Encryption must be mandatory and enforced, this will prevent so much pain for all parties.
- nullc 12y ago
  'looks random' is a pretty bad idea. It will bogusly fire on random files and won't prevent people from just standardizing on a key of 0.
sp332 12y ago
But once the protocol is published, it won't be the only client. Other clients will also have to make encryption decisions.

nullc 12y ago

> with DNS records, etc. And classified ads in the news-paper. It certantly easier to make a complicated case the broader the data channel is— so this is just one reason (along with scalability and cost-of-decentralization) that Bitcoin is pretty stingy with sidechannels.