Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

fc18.ifca.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 162 posts

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#101

Post by gus_massa »

alphydan wrote: post #87
Tepix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a possibility of a technical solution: - You create a special rule for a block known to contain illegal data. - The illegal data in the block gets NULLed. The other transactions are left untouched. - The checksum for the next block is no longer calculated, instead it is hardcoded. This means there is no way of verifying the transactions in that block. Perhaps you add a new signature for the block with the NU…

Wouldn't that allow a 'denial-of-service' like attack? You keep sending illegal content over and over and the next block is never attained. Maybe I am misunderstanding the process.

I think it will not be a 'denial-of-service' attack but a 'denial-of-decentralization' attack. You can modify an old block and skip all the signatures calculation if everyone agree to take the last block as valid in spite it has a broken chain of calculations. Somewhat similar to the ETH/ETC hard fork.

But there has to he some kind of centralized group that bless the new block. Also, a new client and miner software must be released. Perhaps a new version every time an illegal item is included, or perhaps the program can check the list automatically in a website. In both case, it will break the decentralization.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#102

Post by simias »

VMG wrote: post #99
simias wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If said tweets were reported they would (probably?) be deleted. I'm not sure the "custom tool" defense would really work, you could say the same thing for warez on usenet or even simple jpegs and videos, you need special codecs to view them. Furthermore even plain text embedded in the chain might be enough to get you in trouble in some jurisdiction if it contains hate speech, personal info or harassment material for…

What's meant by "containing"? Regular wallet software doesn't allow access to anything besides transaction data. You won't be able to view any text or images. The number "Pi" contains all hate speech and other illegal content imaginable.

I'm not a lawyer, I'm not sure what will and won't hold up in court. I think the main problem would be if you operate a node that's not just a consumer but also uploads blocks, it could be argued that you distribute the potentially infringing content. At this point your ability to actually view the content yourself is moot. You're basically operating a peer-to-peer network that can be used to distribute arbitrary data.

>The number "Pi" contains all hate speech and other illegal content imaginable.

That's irrelevant. If you don't think so try downloading child porn, get caught and argue that "it's just decimals of Pi!". Report back with results.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#103

Post by Tomte »

zeth___ wrote: post #65
Tomte wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All writing is just splinters of carbon or drops of ink. How can an element or a wster-based solution be illegal?

Are you attacking freedom of writing now? I am confused. This is one thing that most of the free world has gotten mostly right: you can say anything you want in writing without having to fear the government. It needs some corner cases ironed out, obviously, but for the most part you can write whatever you want and not be arrested for it.

You're confused. There's no reason to debate with you. Goodbye.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#104

Post by Tomte »

zeth___ wrote: post #60
Tomte wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should simply read the essay and educate yourself. Obviously you won't, but don't act so high and mighty. Especially since "illegal numbers" has been the standard argument of people with lots of opinion and little knowledge. BTW, massively editing and expanding your comment after a reply without any notice is shady.

You are continuing to be hostile. I have read the paper, years ago. His point about 'colour of bits' is conflating a number of different ideas. A chain of trust and intent for starters. A chain of trust is a trivially easy thing to solve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_trust Asking that bits meet some simple predefined function isn't hard. In his example simply demanding that along with the substance you are…

You're hostile and not discussing in good faith. Please leave HN.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#105

Post by OscarCunningham »

VMG wrote: post #86
arcticfox wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a stretch. There's no reason to obfuscate anything (unless miners are actively and intentionally censoring content) and it'd be straightforward to make a browser. For example, I don't think it's a defense for the owner of a website to say "this horrible illegal content I'm sharing is only accessible via a custom tool that downloads and decodes image data from me...such as a web browser."

You can make a browser extension extracting illegal data from innocuous images on twitter

Only by using your own stock of illegal data.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#106

Post by setra »

dharma1 wrote: post #97
icelancer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> one could just put a huge amount of data in there That, ah, isn't how that works. You can't just dump terabytes into the blockchain for BTC, LTC, or really any blockchain I can think of that has any sort of adoption.

Always wondered how IPFS deals with this

IPFS is not an automatically distributed file store. Just like torrents if someone wants to host a petabyte they can. That does not mean anyone else will be mirroring it.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#107

Post by robto »

dharma1 wrote: post #97
icelancer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> one could just put a huge amount of data in there That, ah, isn't how that works. You can't just dump terabytes into the blockchain for BTC, LTC, or really any blockchain I can think of that has any sort of adoption.

Always wondered how IPFS deals with this

IPFS isn't a blockchain, and you only receive data you request - it's pull instead of push oriented. So I don't believe it has any problem with this.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#108

Post by insanity54 »

dharma1 wrote: post #97
icelancer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> one could just put a huge amount of data in there That, ah, isn't how that works. You can't just dump terabytes into the blockchain for BTC, LTC, or really any blockchain I can think of that has any sort of adoption.

Always wondered how IPFS deals with this

+1 to Setra's comment. Regarding illegal content, IPFS gateways have a blacklist https://github.com/ipfs/infrastructure/blob/master/ipfs/gate...

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#109

Post by Tyrannosaur »

VMG wrote: post #86
arcticfox wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a stretch. There's no reason to obfuscate anything (unless miners are actively and intentionally censoring content) and it'd be straightforward to make a browser. For example, I don't think it's a defense for the owner of a website to say "this horrible illegal content I'm sharing is only accessible via a custom tool that downloads and decodes image data from me...such as a web browser."

You can make a browser extension extracting illegal data from innocuous images on twitter

You keep saying this as if it isn't beside the point. Creating illegal content by extracting specific digits of pi or rearranging specific pixels of normal images is completely different than taking already-illegal content and uploading it to somewhere it can never be deleted without compromising a lot of other stuff.

Your arguments seem to be of the nature of "information is information; you can't suppress it and you can't make it illegal" but that's not really what this discussion is about.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#110

Post by otherwiseguy »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #71
ddalex wrote: post #35

So the obvious bit here is that an adversarial actor can poison the blockchain with bits that make downloading, storing and processing the blockchain a highly illegal act. This may have a chilling effect on participating in the network, thus reducing the number of nodes, and undermining the trust on the blockchain and in the coin because the reduced requirement of computing power needed to mutate the blockchain. Acco…

Especially if you consider the possibility of someone loading state secrets onto the chain. It wouldn't take a state actor to initiate that action, but that state actor could render the chain worthless.

That isn't as much of an issue. Once a secret is out, it is out. Something like child porn would be permanently illegal and permanently stored in the chain. Imagine hiding it there, letting a year or two of transactions build upon it before letting people know it was there. You can't remove it. The blockchain is now technically illegal.

I was just thinking about this a lot this week, actually. The really crazy thing is that, due to the PROTECT Act, a person in Japan could legally upload certain manga that the US would consider CP. So one wouldn't even have to risk jail to poison the blockchain.

Post reply on HN