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Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

ipfs.io

221–230 of 249 posts

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#221

I wonder what the legal implications are for hosting a node. I imagine you would have to comply with DMCA requests in the US, so just hosting a node would require you to setup a whole process for that.

Unless everyone just ignores DMCA requests and they become unenforceable.

Ignoring DMCA requests opens you up to being sued for copyright infringement though—that's the entire purpose, is to provide a copyright "safe harbor" for places that host user generated content, provided they meet certain restrictions.

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#222
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few questions about IPNS: - Is it possible to, say, log into my bank account, see my current balance, and set up bill pay? - Can I order a pizza over IPNS? - Can I do realtime chat? Also, this article says we could use Namecoin and not rely on ICANN for DNS, however, you still need ICANN to distribute ip address to get connected to the internet in the first place. Or am I missing something?

1) 2) 3), yes, it is still possible to directly connect to specific peers through IPFS, see http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTkzDwWqPbnAh5YiV5VwcTLnGdwSNsN... I think that it should be possible to build hybrid centralized/decentralized sites with IPFS, with static public content being fully decentralized and sensitive information going through direct tunnels. Of course, the more decentralized your system the better. As…

[deleted]

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#223

While IPFS can certainly complement HTTP (for example in preventing censorship in states such as China), it will not replace HTTP. Decentralization does not work with centralized services (99% of the web) such as Twitter, Google, etc. You'll need HTTP to run server code. I for one will not be hosting a node where arbitrary code can be run. Besides the obvious fact that a centralized service wants to control what serv…

[deleted]

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#224
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with my comment above: you trust the content that is ultimately (up the hierarchy) signed in an IPNS object with a valid signature. And there must indeed by some central authority giving 'ultimate trust'. This is Zooko's triangle. By default IPNS gives you 'decentralized' and 'secure', but you can also opt to tie an IPNS name to a DNS TXT record, and lose 'decentralized' (at least for the initial lookup) but gain…

I think there is a level where DNS -> IPNS ID is even then still better than DNS -> IP address. For DNS -> IPNS you could have a facility in there saying 'This DNS TXT record should not change, if it does something is wrong'. You could lock down the record for a period of time, such as the duration of the lease from the registrar. Besides, the idea is that IPFS could happily support Namecoin[1], so there's the decent…

A 51% attack will let you double spend and roll back transactions. If one wanted to steal an established name on Namecoin, they'd need to either roll back to before it's registration, roll back to before it's previous renewal and force an expiration, or mine past it's next renewal to force expiration. Renewal limit is 36,000 blocks. For a name that consistently renews early every 18,000 blocks a 51% attack would need to go on for months to steal it. Still possible, but very difficult.

Namecoin is merge-mined with Bitcoin by many miners, so if you wanted to 51% it you'd need a pretty large chunk of Bitcoin's hash power. An evil pool could do this, however it would be visible on the Bitcoin blockchain that they were doing it (although not what transactions are present/not present in the attack chain).

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#226
post #128

Just to point out -- hypertext systems prior to the web almost universally expected permanent stable addresses (and this was, for instance, required by the various Xanadu specs). Enquire (Tim Berners-Lee's immediate predecessor to the Web) had permanent stable addresses, too. The web didn't have permanent stable addresses because the web was a hack, intended as a way to explain Enquire to people who didn't have a bac…

> (Let the entire existence of the Web, with its myriad flaws, be a lesson to you: your crappiest demo may well become the thing you're known for twenty-five years later, so make sure your crappiest demo doesn't suck as bad as the Web does.) The web is amazing, and you are using it right now. It has flaws, but so does anything that achieves success at the level the Web has. How many technologies have a direct impact…

I think a big reason for worse-is-better is that simple "crappy" solutions very often have better evolvability characteristics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability

"Elegant and beautiful" systems that are polished and perfect are often also brittle and monolithic and complex. Complex means hard to interoperate with, understand, and re-implement, and brittle means they can't change with the times.

Complexity also favors single vendors due to the difficulty of interoperability and understanding. Xanadu would likely have ended up as Xanadu, Inc. with no third party implementations.

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#227

I wonder what the legal implications are for hosting a node. I imagine you would have to comply with DMCA requests in the US, so just hosting a node would require you to setup a whole process for that.

IPFS is not like freenet where nodes host content -- it is more similar to bittorrent, where you broadcast the files that you have available on your node.

Copyright violations will likely function in a similar route to bittorrent.

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#229
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few questions about IPNS: - Is it possible to, say, log into my bank account, see my current balance, and set up bill pay? - Can I order a pizza over IPNS? - Can I do realtime chat? Also, this article says we could use Namecoin and not rely on ICANN for DNS, however, you still need ICANN to distribute ip address to get connected to the internet in the first place. Or am I missing something?

1) 2) 3), yes, it is still possible to directly connect to specific peers through IPFS, see http://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTkzDwWqPbnAh5YiV5VwcTLnGdwSNsN... I think that it should be possible to build hybrid centralized/decentralized sites with IPFS, with static public content being fully decentralized and sensitive information going through direct tunnels. Of course, the more decentralized your system the better. As…

> project out there to redo the IP system in a decentralized fashion

https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

Re: Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware that's simply not true. See http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets... Furthermore the right to be forgotten only mandates hiding results when someone searches specifically for a name, for example. The results are still allowed to come up for unrelated search terms.

Directive 95/46/EC (the Data Protection Directive) never specifically mentions "search engines", it talks about "controllers" of personal data. The ECJ ruled (Case C‑131/12) that search engines such as Google count as controllers of personal data, and thus are subject to the "right to be forgotten" under the Directive. But clearly the Directive is applicable to many other things than search engines, so the "right to…

Indeed, the Data protection directive is not about search engines: it is about privacy online in general and any web page published or plausibly controlled from within the European union is subject to it (and of course also to any IPFS page, although who controls it is harder to say). It has always applied to a lot more than search engines.

The "right to be forgotten" is a phrase used in the argument for de-listing, and later became the name for the ruling itself. This was however not a right that the court granted, but rather the court points out that the data protection directive stipulates that personal data shall be: """ (c) adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which they are collected and/or further processed;

(d) accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that data which are inaccurate or incomplete, having regard to the purposes for which they were collected or for which they are further processed, are erased or rectified; """ and judges (in paragraph 93) that in particular, data that was once in compliance might not be at a later time.

It also states that the failure of the particular data in this case to be those things means the person described by them can invoke the right to object to the processing, in this case having personal data listed on a page as a response to a "search made on the basis of his name" (in paragraph 94).

It is not completely clear, but I think the query being judged upon includes only the name of the person, and adding a keyword relating to the particular year, or bankruptcy actions, would be enough to make the data "adequate, relevant and not excessive".

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