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IPFS is the Distributed Web

ipfs.io

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191–200 of 286 posts

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#191

Post by cabalamat »

fizzbatter wrote: post #92
idlewords wrote: post #9

I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. That the current web is centralized has little to do with its technical design, and everything to do with economic and structural incentives that have made it that way. It's tempting to say "start afresh", but we'll just be trading our current problems for a new set of problems IPFS introduces. It's a law of nature that pro…

> I worry that this is another example of throwing technology at a social and political problem. I'm so lost at this assertion. How is this a social / political problem? IPFS is not permanent hosting. It is not an attempt to take power away from others and distribute it to the masses. It is purely a technical problem, which i think is objectively true. I have a feeling that you believe IPFS is partially designed to s…

> [IPFS] is not trying to become a pirate haven. Why? Well, mainly because piracy inhibits adoption.

Really? The number of BitTorrent users is considerably greater than the number of IPFS users, so surely the exact opposite is true.

Maybe a piracy platform build on top of IPFS could be its killer app.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#192

Post by rer »

raarts wrote: post #47
idlewords wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to pee all over IPFS. But it's also the case that it's easier to throw out mature, crufty old systems and start afresh. Every programmer knows this temptation. We've had the web for twenty years now, and are just beginning to understand what it is and how it changes the world. If you're suggesting using IPFS (or any other system) as a way to expand and grow the web, I'm with you. But replacing the web…

This line of reasoning can be applied to ANY change. Also HTTP isn't going away.

Why isn't HTTP going away?

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#193

Post by Ericson2314 »

lukasb wrote: post #188
clueless404 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so IPFS isn't for hosting and it's not for unpopular content. What is it for then? For scaling distribution, you say. What problem does it solve? How, what and why? Is it better than BitTorrent for that use case?

it's better than bittorrent because you don't need a centralized tracker.

Also content can be incrementally updated without duplication.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#194

Post by mburns »

clueless404 wrote: post #144
mburns wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because mirroring content on IPFS is trivial and transparent to the consumer. All it takes is a single user (or an arbitrary number) outside of US jurisdiction and the content is more or less DMCA-immune. The equivalent is not practical in traditional HTTP, where content at risk of being taken down is scraped from the server and that snapshot-in-time is hosted as a mirror, generally at a different domain.

> Because mirroring content on IPFS is trivial and transparent to the consumer. Which is also why a regular consumer should never use IPFS and why prosumer should immediately disable caching and seeding upon install. > All it takes is a single user (or an arbitrary number) outside of US jurisdiction and the content is more or less DMCA-immune. Perhaps so, but if your plan for resiliency is based on the kindness of st…

>Which is also why a regular consumer should never use IPFS and why prosumer should immediately disable caching and seeding upon install.

Unless they changed policy, seeding is strictly a manual, opt-in process.

>Perhaps so, but if your plan for resiliency is based on the kindness of strangers in countries where the DMCA nor censorship does not apply, it's not much of a plan.

I disagree, IPFS is a pretty reasonable plan for resiliency in the case of static web content, as previously discussed.

If instead of "kindness of strangers" you frame it as a "market with incentives" to maintain information availability it is both less condescending and more accurate to how situations are likely to play out with things like DMCA'd content.

>So, while better than traditional HTTP

(which is all it needs to be)

>IPFS isn't really immune to takedowns nor very resilient.

That wasn't the goalpost we originally set, nor one of the project's longterm objectives, so I'm not sure the relevance.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#195

Post by c22 »

vegabook wrote: post #171
c22 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the impermanence is one of the most appealing aspects of the system. Content that no one uses and that no one is willing to sustain gets culled from the network, what more could you ask for?

I assume you would also like ext4 to automatically delete your seldom used files, without asking?

That's absurd, ext4 solves a different problem. This is about distribution.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#196

Post by mark_l_watson »

I heard about IPFS at the Decentralized Web Conference in SF last spring. It sounded promising, long term. Anyone here using it right now? What are the costs for running it on a VPS, for example, bandwidth, storage, and CPU load?

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#198

Post by clueless404 »

lukasb wrote: post #188
clueless404 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so IPFS isn't for hosting and it's not for unpopular content. What is it for then? For scaling distribution, you say. What problem does it solve? How, what and why? Is it better than BitTorrent for that use case?

it's better than bittorrent because you don't need a centralized tracker.

That's not much of a benefit, as there are tracker less torrents.

Re: IPFS is the Distributed Web

#200

Post by clueless404 »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #185
clueless404 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, no. You have no guarantees that the content put up via IPFS is by the original copyright owner. Thus immediately after you receive the infringing content over IPFS and start seeding it, you are infringing on the copyright owners rights. You have no recourse and no legal defenses to protect you.

Well, then, as soon as you receive notification, you can immediately stop hosting the data: it's like a DMCA takedown, but you have to send it to way more people.

Too late. Once you've retrieved content via IPFS, you are already infringing. You can still be sued, waiting for a DMCA notice won't save you.
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