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How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

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Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#11

Post by humblebee »

"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically"

This isn't entirely accurate though. It's only replicated if people request it. If everyone only requests the content through `ipfs.io` then the content will only be living on the original seeder, and the IPFS gateway nodes which run GC on a regular basis.

Depending on how the content is moved, it _might_ end up on a few other nodes (a way around nats, by using a third party peer to stream content between two peers), but I believe it's only ever moved through the network, and will not be stored on the nodes. If it is, it's only there till the next GC (disabled by default I believe).

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#13

Post by diggan »

kilburn wrote: post #2

Author here. I've tried to keep the article as apolitical as possible, while giving some context to provide the setting. Anyway, I'm very interested in knowing if the used crypto is sound or not, and stirring a discussion around possible alternative approaches. Ask me anything if you want to know further!

Alternative approach: Instead of using the IPFS2HTTP gateways (that can easily be censored, as gateway.ipfs.io has already been censored in Catalunya), run a IPFS daemon locally that cannot be censored (but is not anonymous either).

I live in Catalunya and wrote this tool for doing just that, in a easy way. It 1) starts a go-ipfs daemon locally, 2) opens up the referendum website in your default browser, via localhost.

If you're interested in accessing the website from inside Catalunya, give it a try: https://git.io/vdGUx

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#14

Post by rljy »

diggan wrote: post #8

"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. " It's right that the connections are encrypted, but it's NOT correct to say that content is automatically replicated (but it's a common misconception). Instead, content who is wanted b…

You do NOT need to explicitly pin content to help replicate it. Any content which is requested via IPFS is replicated by the daemon, up until it is GCed. The only thing that pinning does, is prevent the content from ever being GCed

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#15

Post by [deleted] »

rljy wrote: post #14
diggan wrote: post #8

"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. " It's right that the connections are encrypted, but it's NOT correct to say that content is automatically replicated (but it's a common misconception). Instead, content who is wanted b…

You do NOT need to explicitly pin content to help replicate it. Any content which is requested via IPFS is replicated by the daemon, up until it is GCed. The only thing that pinning does, is prevent the content from ever being GCed

[deleted]

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#16

Post by JBReefer »

pyre wrote: post #6
multibit wrote: post #3

"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. Maybe China could do it, but Spain definitely cannot." How would China do it?

I imagine because China has spent more time on the required infrastructure to make this happen. Spain is trying to stop something that is set to happen on Oct 1, so they have a finite amount of time to suppress the information.

By the same token, they're also not the home of a bunch of friendly companies that will implement the work, unlike China, and they don't have a long history of trying to stop the flow of information, unlike China, and they don't have a effectively infinite budget, unlike China.

I'm betting against Spain on this one. Go Catalonia!

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#17

Post by panarky »

kilburn wrote: post #2

Author here. I've tried to keep the article as apolitical as possible, while giving some context to provide the setting. Anyway, I'm very interested in knowing if the used crypto is sound or not, and stirring a discussion around possible alternative approaches. Ask me anything if you want to know further!

> Catalan officials can just distribute the hash of the main page file, and everyone else can be sure that all content linked from that file has been published by the catalan authorities.

How does the hash of the main page guarantee that content linked from that page is authentic?

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#19

Post by kilburn »

diggan wrote: post #8

"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. " It's right that the connections are encrypted, but it's NOT correct to say that content is automatically replicated (but it's a common misconception). Instead, content who is wanted b…

Thanks for pointing this out. I've corrected the article!

Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

#20

Post by kilburn »

codewithcheese wrote: post #18

It seems shocking that Spain a member of the EU is resorting to these tactics. Can you discuss some of their justifications for doing so?

The spanish constituion explicitly states that Spain is an indivisible country. Hence, the Constituional Court (that is elected by the parliament) has ruled out that any referendum about independence is illegal.

At this point, the government says that both them and the judiciary powers are just defending the democratic rules, and Catalonia's government is the one at fault for all this hassle.

The problem is that it is accepted that there's a wide majority of catalan people who want a referendum, and here we are...

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