101–110 of 123 posts
Hi! CTO of Storj here. This article makes some reasonable points, and it makes some unreasonable ones. First, on the reasonable: absolutely, privacy and security should be layered on top of whatever storage platform you use using your own encryption. No objection! That's the right approach. It is always better to bring your own encryption, and having it layered so your storage provider can't have access is great. I h…
edit: Wouldn't erasure codes just completely fix it (as described by the Storj guy)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Data retrieval is broken into blocks so it's a repeated game with incentives to cooperate. AFAIK Filecoin uses payment channels so you probably lock some money, retrieve data, then unlock the payment.
Incremental transfer seems like it should give an incentive to cooperate, but I don't think so? If I pay you upfront for the first block, what stops you from then saying: actually I still want more money to start transfering the first block?
I dunno about that. Amazon and Google, at least, charge significantly more than I could go out and buy a few drives for on sale. (AND, of course, they charge it perpetually. Dunno how StorJ works.)
The article raises a question I've wondered about before: how do you know that anyone will transfer you your data when you need it? You can require people to prove that they stored it, but how can you require people to transfer it out to you? You presumably agree with the node to pay for the transfer out, but if both counterparties are anonymous and do not trust each other, how is this accomplished?
The answer is incentives: if you're paying to retrieve data, why shouldn't they take your business?
As someone who's been interested in filecoin mining for a while, my main question is around legal liability for miners. For instance, if I am storing other people's data and it turns out someone was storing something illegal (unbeknownst to me), could I be held liable under US law?
Why do you think this is different than hosting a normal website with file uploads? Literally millions of people have made such websites (especially around 2000-2010).
A small filecoin operation would not have the legal funds to defend against an aggressive prosecutor trying to “take down a network of dangerous pornographers” and would get little sympathy from a general public that doesn’t understand the tech.
Until there is strong legal precedent, I wouldn’t entertain a mining operation. Maybe I’m paranoid but it just doesn’t seem worth the risk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how this addresses the reliability claim. There's a big difference between explaining that the data is stored in a Google cloud with certified 11-nines reliability, versus stored on a N number of machines in multiple clouds with unknown specs. How do I communicate the reliability of a distributed cloud that is essentially a collection of random servers? Is there a way that each of these server's reliabili…
You'd say something like "This content is hosted by 100 providers, with each having individual average uptime of 99.9%"
The article raises a question I've wondered about before: how do you know that anyone will transfer you your data when you need it? You can require people to prove that they stored it, but how can you require people to transfer it out to you? You presumably agree with the node to pay for the transfer out, but if both counterparties are anonymous and do not trust each other, how is this accomplished?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think this is different than hosting a normal website with file uploads? Literally millions of people have made such websites (especially around 2000-2010).
That’s true but when you host a website, you can decide what types of files can be uploaded. With this sort of decentralized storage network, people will include whatever files they want. And to put a finer point on it, no doubt some significant portion of the file content will be horrifying video content, some of which will be illegal. My question is more around the liability for that, even if it is encrypted and th…
>it just doesn’t seem worth the risk.
Well, the concern is only yours.
This does raise the point that if police contact you to remove some data you are hosting for someone, you lose money, and they will likely not give you back whatever money you lost (all the more reason it should be fully anonymous like Freenet but IPFS and co are obsessed with trying to solve every use case in the world including legal compliance).