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Comment by jcoffland | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but not with Google. This can be done with the Bitcoin blockchain. Before you groan, hear me out. You can submit a transaction which contains a hash of your content. Once it's on the blockchain you can prove that the content was created no later than the date of the transaction.

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.. Which does nothing against a backdated article. What stops me from copying a NYT article and posting it to the blockchain a few hours after, claiming it's mine?

What makes the bitcoin blockchain good for this? The bitcoin blockchain is good for posting transactions within the bitcoin network and kind of a shitty solution for "a generic blockchain"

Why a blockchain at all? Why not just a merkle tree? Surely there is somewhere better than the bitcoin blockchain for this. CT logging isn't done on the bitcoin blockchain for a reason.

So sure, you can prove that something wasn't created after the date of the transaction (assuming you're using a CS hashing function), but for this to work in this specific context, you'd need every publisher to be posting transactions to this log.

If I post an article and post a hash to $genericBlockchainWhichIsReallyJustAMerkleTree, what prevents someone from copying, backdating, and saying that I copied them? That they didn't post to the log as well?

Agree that bitcoin blockchain is unnecessary, but isn't there some merit in the idea that all major publishers in a juristiction would opt-in to posting to a single chain? Given the potential legal cost savings it would seem to be at least somewhat feasible.

Oh absolutely. But I don't know how much of a "blockchain" that really is depending on how you define it. When I think blockchain, I think miners/proof of work/etc.

Is a CT log a blockchain? Because really what we're talking about here is a signed ledger which may be decentralized but very well may be centralized as well.

You should really educate yourself on the bitcoin blockchain and how it records time before making a fool of yourself by trying so desperately to dismiss it.

> What makes the bitcoin blockchain good for this?

I can use it for decentralized time stamping right now.

Problem is, the evil SEOs backdate, therefore he needs to prove that the content was created no earlier - thus IIUC, blockchain/Merkle tree can't help him...

Depends on who has the burden of proof? The evil SEO cannot prove his version was created earlier than his.

Any third-party tool like PasteBin would work in a similar way and incur no transaction fee.

There is no way to know that someone at PasteBin wasn't paid off.

Are you saying that you'd be willing to host such a blockchain on your machine with timestamps and hashes for every article in the Internet?

No need to do it yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping

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