Um… how are links not data?
I said blob data…not data itself.
The size of the blockchain is irrelevant. The size of what can be stored in a block or single Tx is relevant. So we’re talking about ways to store links to data that could be nefarious. Companies like Storj and protocols like IPFS specialize in decentralized data storage, which means you could place a link to content that could not only be highly illegal, but could also be impossible to shut down.
Image someone took private photos or video of you, your family, etc. and uploaded it into a cloud that cannot be shut down or removed…then posted the links to this in a way that cannot be removed or shut down. Or imagine if someone wrote something libelous about you and uploaded it to a censorship resistant blockchain blog solution, and now it is there forever.
Welcome to the brave new world of blockchain.
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I’m really starting to think bitcoin was invented by Intel and the NSA in a back room. Pump up the chip business a bit, create a big black budget out of, well not thin air, rather the energy usage of a nation state.
Oh, and:
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I’ll bet that’s a perfect excuse if they want to get you though. (And from what I recall, Traci Lords almost got a lot of porn producers, distributors, and performers in a lot of trouble, until it was eventually argued that her fake I.D. was good enough to get her a U.S. passport, you can’t blame us for trusting it. Frankly, I’m surprised that excuse worked.)
Got it. That said, link-length chunks of data can contain (A) sequence position, and sequence ID, and (B) data for that sequence. Add encrypty and obfuscaty bits if you like: data blob = assembled sequence.
Also, apparently images files, not just links, are stored in bitcoin.
Sure but the question would be what they want to get you for. Anyone who’s legitimate interest is in fighting child porn isn’t going to go running around prosecuting any asshole with a copy of the block chain and only a copy of the block chain. Risks on that front come from those who don’t know or care what they’re doing. Or who are looking for an excuse. Given the wide distribution of the blockchain, and the fact that its central purpose has nothing to do with pornography. In a legal system like the US (provided nothings fishy), it’ll take more than just presence of the blockchain file to make a plausible charge and get it to stick. Legal systems not like the US, or when somethings seriously fishy. Maybe not.
Frankly I think the risks here. Especially given that there’s news stories and information censored in countries like China on there too. Is in those sorts of countries. We may very well see China cracking down on blockchain child pornographers so they can try to flush that information down to toilet with out acknowledging it or risking its increased spread. Kind of undermines the whole “crypto-currency is important in authoritarian and unstable countries!” thing.
Is just the most prominent example of that. And it isn’t as if they asked very nicely to be let go just this once. As near as anyone can establish the out there explanation, Lords passed fake ID and fooled everyone, is the truth. She stole some one else’s identity. Was given another persons actual birth certificate. Even Lords herself is still sticking to that. What that created as a very real problem in terms of actually getting a conviction. Because as near as can be established. Noone intended to create or distribute child porn. And noone knew they were creating a distributing child porn. Except Lords herself (and IIRC her boyfriend early on). That creates the problem vis a vis intent. Their “excuse” (and Lords own statements) made the potential for successful prosecution much, much lower. So eventually no charges were filed.
There have been other examples of that in mainstream porn. As well as scattered and less clear examples from the age of internet porn. And generally, provided the company involved checked the proper IDs, did their due diligence and followed the law. Filed all their paperwork. Whether producing themselves or purchasing content from another producer (often outside the US) they generally aren’t prosecuted. For the same reason. Its potentially very difficult to prosecute some one for unknowingly possessing or producing something, when there is a clear paper trail establishing that they did everything they should have to not possess or produce that thing. IIRC the Traci Lords scandal is why we have the records keeping, reporting, and ID requirements for porn these days.
The media itself is removed (as best as is practically possible) from circulation. And anyone who possesses it, or distributes it after its established to be child porn. Is prosecuted for possession or distribution. Because at that point that’s all it is.
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No, it is already a dead end technology because its only innovation is taking something that already existed and making it astoundingly less efficient for the purposes of anonymising financial transactions. Any appearance to the contrary is simply because it exists in a bubble of technobabble hype that papers over its fundamental inability to be the financial instrument promised while being traded as a completely unregulated commodity susceptible to every pump and dump and confidence scheme ever conceived of.
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Like a … er … what do you call those things?
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I don’t think the blockchain already existed… cryptocurrencies’ social utility, or lack thereof are simple the first major application of the blockchain, right? But semantically bad actors—people embedding links to child porn, rather than cheating the blockchain rules per se—may (1) introduce risks to block chain uses (regardless of whether those uses are for cryptocurrencies, or other public ledgers), and (2) introduce volatility in the trust that holds the system together.
Always growing?
Cancer.
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“The blockchain” is a Merkle-tree (patented in 1979) protected by a derivative of the HashCash (proposed 1992) proof-of-work system. The only difference is that the POW has been adapted into a P2P competitive industrial panning for digital gold in order to solve the deep financial problem of “the authorities can see where my money goes”.
With regard to (1): bad actors embedding links to child porn does not introduce risks to block chain use, that risk inherently exists regardless of use or application because the blockchain is intentionally designed to be an uncontrollable decentralised database with irrevocable authority granted to any entry with attached arbitrary data agreed to be a valid transaction by miners. (2): you cannot expect trust in a trustless system
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A misleading headline? On my BoingBoing?
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Don’t look now, but there is a stick figure depicting a toddler doing something lewd steganographically encoded in the banner on this web page. And now it’s in YOUR browser cache.
No! Don’t look! You’ve been warned. Mens rea and all that…
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