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IPFS is the Distributed Web

ipfs.io

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Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#151
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it's bad: the hosting user receives no credit, and local mirroring keeps retrieval speeds high. Your users effectively become a giant CDN for you. Who would sue?

I wouldn't sue anyone. But I can watch music videos on YouTube without contacting all of the the relevant rights holders to ensure both the uploader and YouTube have permission to show me the video. On a distributed file share lacking anonymity and/or immunity, I have to ensure that I have those rights before viewing (thus distributing) any content. Immunity is not likely to happen, as it would amount to granting red…

From what I understand, the plan is to have blacklists that you can subscribe to, so if you don't, then you can be legally presumed to have knowingly pirated material.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the web going more mobile with less storage space. Why would anyone would want to be a node in such a network where you have to cache content for others.

Well apart from battery, If I was an ISP, I´d like it if a Youtube movie would flow from one persons mobile to the hotspot of the train said person is sitting on and on towards another person on the train. This scenario would require significantly less bandwidth overall. Same goes for neighbors accessing the same information. And this can be extrapolated to many situations. The IPFS powered internet would perhaps lea…

> Well apart from battery,

... and that's pretty much the deal killer for this on mobile, even ignoring everything else.

> If I was an ISP, I´d like it if a Youtube movie

... except you are not allowed to download videos from YouTube or most (if not all) the popular video content services.

> a Youtube movie would flow from one persons mobile to the hotspot of the train said person is sitting on and on towards another person on the train.

This would only work as long as person A is running IPFS, connected to the hotspot and has any cached content somebody else is concurrently interested in. The hotspot is very unlikely to run IPFS and to have any storage, so cache hit ratios would not only be low they would be dependent on person A's transit schedule.

> This scenario would require significantly less bandwidth overall.

No, the same amount of bandwidth would be consumed, but perhaps over a cheaper radio bearer.

> The IPFS powered internet would perhaps lead to more uploads but it would scale significantly better and will be cheaper to maintain.

Somehow I doubt that. Total costs would most likely go up, but they would perhaps be more spread out.

> Hence cost can also go down for end users/consumers.

Consumers don't spend anything for accessing content on the Internet, so I really doubt there are any cost savings to be had.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're not uploading something that hasn't been, you're mirroring something that's already up.

You won't have any luck with that argument in court. If you doubt me, see all verdicts for infringement when bitorrenting.

But this is very different: This is more like the original copyright holder putting something on BitTorrent, inviting people to download it freely, and them suing anybody who seeds it: By putting the data on a P2P protocol, you've kind of implicitly stated that you're okay with people seeding, or whatever the local terminology for the same is.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#155

Some content here to play with: [0] Interestingly some links to copyrighted material end in ¨Unavailable for Legal Reasons¨ however, running the daemon and issuing an ¨ipfs get hash¨ the download does start. [0] https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmU5XsVwvJfTcCwqkK1SmTqDmXWSQWaTa7ZcVLY...

The "unavailable for legal reasons" message appears to be issued by the ipfs.io gateway - IMO perfectly reasonable.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#156
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By simply not downloading and seeding it. ;) In IPFS you do not automatically relay things, you have to explicitly decide to.

> By simply not downloading and seeding it. ;) You seem to have glanced over the qualifier I used: accidentally. Given a hash for an IPFS resource, how do you know it does not contain child porn before you retrieve it? Once you have downloaded it you have committed a crime. There are no take backs with strict liability crimes and IPFS provides no anonymity, so there is a record of you downloading and seeding child po…

> Given a hash for an IPFS resource, how do you know it does not contain child porn before you retrieve it?

Given a URL for an HTTP resource, how do you know it does not contain child porn before you retrieve it?

> seeding

https://freenetproject.org/help.html#childporn

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#157

There's an interesting emphasis on developing nations not engaging with the Internet, but I think that might be partially cultural too. What tools have we given the developing world to really engage with the internet? The easy-to-use publishing platform often require an email and usually a real name. Both of these things may be unavailable to countries where being connected to thoughts posted online could be dangerou…

I think the better solutions come from within the society, rather than being imposed from without (Cuba's flash-drive sneakernet). An outsider might provide the gross implementation, but it should be up to the locals to work out the messy details, even if it means they don't connect to the net, as a whole, on a regular basis. It's their lives on the line, they're going to have the best ideas on how to preserve them. An outsider is going to be, at best, somewhat ill-informed and at worst, inimical to the solution.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#158
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe Blow would just need to find some fans who think that keeping his content available for others is worth their while. I believe this could work amazingly well for netlabels and indie bands.

Regardless of whether I think this is a bit of a far fetched use case or not, this really does nothing for Joe Blow and his content distribution needs. But let's roll with it anyway. How does IPFS solve this problem, and more specifically how does IPFS solve this problem any better than just publishing a torrent of Joe Blows collected ramblings?

Sorry, I don't really care about your theoretical questions. IPFS is nice and fun technology. If you don't want to participate, you don't have to.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are clearly fond of democracy as a solution to conflicting social goals. Democracy has some nice properties, but also downsides: notably it can only try a single solution at a time. The idea behind decentralized architecture is: instead of trying to find a better way to agree on one thing, how about we assume from the start that different people will want different things? What do we actually need to agree on? In…

This image of AIs in the forest is really arresting. It reminds me of something Joi Ito said recently about us nerdles all trying to pass the thorny problems of living with one another as human beings up to a higher intelligence, which is a way of reducing them to (the world's hardest) programming problem. I imagine that our AI companions in the forest would just play hyperdimensional space chess with one another, or…

I'm not talking about autonomous AIs, I'm talking about controllable AIs.

And I absolutely don't consider it a programming problem. You'll notice I said they will help us negotiate, not negotiate on our behalf. It is a design challenge, which makes it partly a social problem and partly and engineering problem.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#160
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By simply not downloading and seeding it. ;) You seem to have glanced over the qualifier I used: accidentally. Given a hash for an IPFS resource, how do you know it does not contain child porn before you retrieve it? Once you have downloaded it you have committed a crime. There are no take backs with strict liability crimes and IPFS provides no anonymity, so there is a record of you downloading and seeding child po…

> Given a hash for an IPFS resource, how do you know it does not contain child porn before you retrieve it? Given a URL for an HTTP resource, how do you know it does not contain child porn before you retrieve it? > seeding https://freenetproject.org/help.html#childporn

> Given a URL for an HTTP resource, how do you know it does not contain child porn before you retrieve it?

You don't, but then again regular browsing does not automatically download the illegal content, start seeding it and announce to the world that you have it on your computer. Big difference.

Also since IPFS deals with content hashes, you not only could and should, you absolutely must ensure any content you download via IPFS does not contain known instances of illegal content.

>> > seeding > > https://freenetproject.org/help.html#childporn

How is this in any way relevant?

Freenet provides anonymity, IPFS does not. Again, big difference.

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