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Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

filecoin.io

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Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#81

Post by Zahlmeister »

stebalien wrote: post #39
strictnein wrote: post #14

Opening up my hard drive to store unknown materials? Imagine trying to explain any of this to a cop, judge, or jury.

How is this any different from what Amazon does? They don't manually inspect all uploaded files. Instead, they rely on legal protections given to service providers. Filecoin miners can do the same by (a) registering as service providers and (b) complying with blacklists and takedown notices as mandated by their legal jurisdiction. Note: Filecoin miners don't just store arbitrary files assigned by the network; they si…

>> Filecoin miners can do the same by (a) registering as service providers and (b) complying with blacklists and takedown notices as mandated by their legal jurisdiction.

That would be a huge overhead to be replicated across participants, driving out smaller players, lowering the "distributed" aspect of the system, creating larger points of failure and increasing the price.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#82

Post by Zahlmeister »

colordrops wrote: post #63
svara wrote: post #60

This sounds interesting academically, but what I don't understand (I have the same problem with Siacoin, StorJ and Swarm) is: You could build a Dropbox clone where users have the option of contributing storage to get rewarded with real currency. Why would anyone want to use the decentralized version instead, both as a user and as a contributor of storage? The decentralized version is going to be much harder to get ri…

Because once they do get it right, it's open source and no one can take it away. A centralized system can and most likely will eventually degrade and disappear. Also, privacy.

I believe the market right now tells you that people value neither redundancy (creating business for file recovery services) nor privacy all that much.

They do value simplicity of use above all and they do trust large companies (for better or worse).

What makes this system better than the other systems that fulfill essentially the same purpose? What does "getting it right" mean? Are they getting it right and how so?

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#83

Post by easytiger »

strgrd wrote: post #33
alikoneko wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the reason I can't take Silicon Valley too seriously. It isn't the magic algorithm, it is that no sane person would want Pied Piper's storage because it does just what you said in the context of the show.

The same reason I can't take Ethereum seriously. Do people seriously trust, or want an unproven hypervisor running code remotely on their hardware/network?

From 9 hours ago: https://etherscan.io/address/0xb3764761e297d6f121e79c32a6582...

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#84

Post by GhotiFish »

strictnein wrote: post #77
kyledrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to imagine. There's an enormous amount of case law here. It has repeatedly been upheld that hosts are not liable for hosted content published by others (at least in the US): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

And when you tell the judge that you don't even have the ability to take down the offending material, what then?

out of curiosity, who is this judge talking to again? A storage node?

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#85

Post by greenshackle2 »

bjoveski wrote: post #65
hollander wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is how this will guarantee the existence of these files. How do I know my files are secure? If my files are spread over several machines, and one or several go offline, are reinstalled, whatever. How do I know my files are secure?

The file is encrypted locally before uploading to the network. Then the file is sharded, and the shards are replicated among the nodes. Once a shard falls below a certain replication threshold, it will get copied to a new node. There are other schemes that don't require a copy of each shard, allowing you to reconstruct the file if any subset of the nodes is online.

> allowing you to reconstruct the file if any subset of the nodes is online.

Any subset? Surely there's some minimum number of nodes (>1) that need to be online. Unless each node has a complete copy.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#86

Post by stebalien »

strictnein wrote: post #77
kyledrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to imagine. There's an enormous amount of case law here. It has repeatedly been upheld that hosts are not liable for hosted content published by others (at least in the US): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

And when you tell the judge that you don't even have the ability to take down the offending material, what then?

You can absolutely take down the offending material; you'll just lose the collateral (you can also transfer the contract to someone else but that will likely not be legal in all jurisdictions). However, as the contracts are made between the clients and miners directly, miners can choose to charge anonymous/untrusted clients more to make up for this potential eventuality.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#87

Post by FooHentai »

strictnein wrote: post #77
kyledrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to imagine. There's an enormous amount of case law here. It has repeatedly been upheld that hosts are not liable for hosted content published by others (at least in the US): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

And when you tell the judge that you don't even have the ability to take down the offending material, what then?

But you do, as far as your own hosting of that data is concerned - You shut off your node and delete your data store.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#88

Post by viraptor »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #79
viraptor wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs you the bandwidth (it's not a long term cold storage) and extra processing power (so electricity cost) for running filecoin. This may well be lower cost than the gain from hosting, but it's still non-zero.

Bandwidth is effectively free for many users (no data cap), and the amount of processing power required for something simple like file storage is pretty trivial. You're right that it's non-zero, but I'd imagine it's probably on the order of pennies a month.

If you don't have data caps, be happy. But, they're still very common and even if you don't have them in your contract, you may get penalties applied after some threshold.

The cost can be also in concurrent access. Unless you apply a heavy QoS on your network, serving filecoin network may degrade your other tasks.

Now if you don't have caps and want to keep it that way, I wouldn't be excited about filecoin. Unless you're actually paying for guaranteed bandwidth and it's part of your contract, your ISP is overcommitting. The moment people actually start relying on that fact, the ISP can do one of: raise prices and buy more pipes, lower the speed, reintroduce caps. The first one is a limited resource that takes time to apply. The other two are quick and known solutions.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#89

Post by viraptor »

stebalien wrote: post #39
strictnein wrote: post #14

Opening up my hard drive to store unknown materials? Imagine trying to explain any of this to a cop, judge, or jury.

How is this any different from what Amazon does? They don't manually inspect all uploaded files. Instead, they rely on legal protections given to service providers. Filecoin miners can do the same by (a) registering as service providers and (b) complying with blacklists and takedown notices as mandated by their legal jurisdiction. Note: Filecoin miners don't just store arbitrary files assigned by the network; they si…

> The only difference from Amazon is that the network itself enforces these contracts.

No, the difference is that Amazon's contacts can identify the buyer and they're actual, legal contacts. They also have terms and conditions. Miners have contacts in terms of what the network is doing, which have nothing to do with contracts as understood by law. These are two meanings which just happen to use the same word.

Re: Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network [pdf]

#90

Post by doingmyting »

strictnein wrote: post #75
stebalien wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any different from what Amazon does? They don't manually inspect all uploaded files. Instead, they rely on legal protections given to service providers. Filecoin miners can do the same by (a) registering as service providers and (b) complying with blacklists and takedown notices as mandated by their legal jurisdiction. Note: Filecoin miners don't just store arbitrary files assigned by the network; they si…

Amazon has an army of lawyers, a well written TOS, an identifiable customer, and a corporate shield. They also have the ability to take down offending material.

Not to mention a near endless pile of cash to fight any legal challenge for eternity
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