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Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
21–30 of 199 posts
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#22This is a flashback for me to 2006. I was working on storage technology and reviewing a few products in p2p storage. There's too much burden to apply p2p to get space. Storage is cheap enough for this idea to work.
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
All data is fragmented and encrypted, so it's impossible to know whether a particular host is storing a fragment of illegal content or not. I suppose if you somehow _did_ find out you were hosting a fragment of illegal content you could breach the storage contract (and pay the resulting penalty) but that's very unlikely because, again, all content is encrypted.
Seems like this could be a common use case for pirates. Similar to how Megaupload or Fileshare worked a few years ago. Sia's encryption doesn't protect the file hosts, if the uploader posts a link + decryption keys for pirated content to a public file sharing forum. Does the take down notice go to everyone that hosts a fragment of the file? Who is liable if the uploader can't be traced?
Good question.
I suppose that would only work if whatever keys the pirate needed to publish to allow the data to be downloaded wouldn't _also_ give the keyholder the ability to delete that data. Otherwise the copyright holder could just issue the command to delete the file themselves. I'm not sure if Sia works that way or not; would be interesting to see.
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the spirit of blockchain and decentralization, I think you're right. But practically, explaining that to the authorities will probably not be a pleasant experience if they manage to find cp or other illegal data on your hard drive.
The data is encrypted by the client, so that's theoretically impossible. Neither you nor the authorities have the ability to determine what file fragments (whole flies aren't stored; just fragments) are on your PC.
It's not theoretically impossible for law enforcement to discover the encryption keys to some illegal files on someone's computer. Then they could go around arresting people who host the chunks. Of course those people wouldn't have known about those files in particular, but they were knowingly running software that enables hosting illegal files. A judge would have to decide if that's OK.
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#25Can someone ELI5 why you need a blockchain for this? Another startup could make a non-blockchain version of this that uses similar syncing technology to GDrive / Dropbox file sync that just syncs other people's stuff instead of yours and pays you monthly.
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the spirit of blockchain and decentralization, I think you're right. But practically, explaining that to the authorities will probably not be a pleasant experience if they manage to find cp or other illegal data on your hard drive.
The data is encrypted by the client, so that's theoretically impossible. Neither you nor the authorities have the ability to determine what file fragments (whole flies aren't stored; just fragments) are on your PC.
Someone could upload data to you then later reveal the keys. If the authorities have the metadata and keys they can determine who is storing the data.
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like this could be a common use case for pirates. Similar to how Megaupload or Fileshare worked a few years ago. Sia's encryption doesn't protect the file hosts, if the uploader posts a link + decryption keys for pirated content to a public file sharing forum. Does the take down notice go to everyone that hosts a fragment of the file? Who is liable if the uploader can't be traced?
Good question. I suppose that would only work if whatever keys the pirate needed to publish to allow the data to be downloaded wouldn't _also_ give the keyholder the ability to delete that data. Otherwise the copyright holder could just issue the command to delete the file themselves. I'm not sure if Sia works that way or not; would be interesting to see.
Since they say their intent is to compete on price with S3 / CDNs, it seems possible to be able to download a file without having permissions to delete that file. If that were not the case, then Sia would be limited to personal backup only.
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#28How do services like Sia handle illegal content?
I believe that censorship resistance is a key value proposition for decentralized file storage. So its agnostic handling of illegal content is a feature, not a bug.
I wonder about whether it's right to be renting your storage space away without knowing what it's being used for. I don't want to directly contribute toward bad things happening.
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#29Can someone ELI5 why you need a blockchain for this? Another startup could make a non-blockchain version of this that uses similar syncing technology to GDrive / Dropbox file sync that just syncs other people's stuff instead of yours and pays you monthly.
Non-reliant on central services or entities.
Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network
#30> How is this possible? By removing intermediaries > [Sia] makes a small transaction fee from each file contract. Am I wrong in observing that the number of intermediaries between hosting data on AWS == the number of intermediaries oh Sia == 1? What exactly is this doing? Blockchain contracts to rent out your hard drives?
I agree that the use cases don't seem to be lining up. So is this for personal use or corporate data center replacement? Consumer companies will give you 2TB for $10 with no bandwidth costs with guaranteed replication and sharding built in. What happens when one of these nodes goes down? I didn't see anything in the post about that. I think the thing that always gets lost in these ideas is that there is a reason that people pay these current prices. It is because is solves a real problem and high reliability requires paying people to make sure that is true. A smart contract and collecting micro payments on the hope a cryptocurrency will rise in price have much different skin in the game.
I've always thought the most important use case around decentralized storage was more around censorship. You can post content that is harder to block in countries that firewall AWS, etc.