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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

IPFS isn't fit for purpose.

It needs censorship-resistance added. It needs user privacy added.

Both of those could be enabled by combining data blocks semi-randomly. Ie. rather than downloading the data you're looking for, you download a block of data containing what you're looking for and some other data. Then nobody knows what it was you were looking at. Some combined blocks might contain a few bytes of data from thousands of files.

For censorship resistance, rather than users pinning individual files, the network needs to assign them blocks they must store (or be kicked off the network). Some of those blocks will be combined blocks which contain a few bytes some users may not wish to store - and that's fine, it means IPFS isn't for them.

Remember that data can be encrypted by content hash, so there is no way to know what you're storing unless you go scouring the public internet for a key to decrypt it.

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> you download a block of data containing what you're looking for and some other data

That IPFS does NOT put data I did not explicitly requested on my storage is exactly why I feel comfortable using it compared to some other distributed storage systems where I might end up with horrific data on my system.

Except you'd only have the keys for your data...

And encrypted data you don't have the key for is indistinguishable from random noise. 'Combined' blocks that you don't know which partner blocks are necessary for decoding are likewise useless.

You're being like a mailman handling mail - you can't look into the mail, so you can't know if you're delivering love letters, junkmail, or terrorist propaganda.

While true, if the government downloads objectionable/illegal data and they detect that 10% of that data is coming from your IP address you'll likely have a very bad day. Sure weeks or months later you might convince a judge and/or jury that you had no access or control to that data, and you might even get your laptops, desktops, and external storage back.

ISPs and USPS have common carrier protection, by default a home user does not.

This is such a key point that people forget: this isn’t some academic game theoretical debate but rather a question of how your actions will be perceived by society. If your IP is used to serve illegal content, saying “well actually, …” isn’t a defense and it most likely means you’re getting charged as an accessory to whatever that stranger did. Even if you can avoid legal penalties after years and significant expense, your reputation will be linked.

I am not a legal expert but shouldn't the prosecutor prove that you knew about the content? Because if yes, this is basically impossible.

You are already deep in a legal process at that point and your life might be ruined.

It depends on exactly what you’re talking about and which laws apply, but in general the problem for things like this, running a Tor exit node, etc. is that the content is something which people keep secret and the scenarios you need to worry about are related to serious crimes. If it’s, say, a small amount of copyrighted material your ISP will get an automated cease and desist letter but if your IP serves part of the requests for CSAM or non-consensual pornography, classified material, terrorism-related stuff, etc. that’s a very different situation. You might eventually be able to get off in court but that’s years after you’ve been in the news and quite likely had all of your devices confiscated in an unannounced raid (criminals have set up systems to destroy evidence so this isn’t without some justification), and you’d have incurred significant legal costs even if this didn’t cause you to become unemployed.

The underlying problem here is that it’s basically impossible to distinguish between someone naively allowing strangers to use their property and someone who is trying to cover their tracks by pretending to be unaware, and the internet is full of people who will abuse any free service. If it happens once, maybe you can plead ignorance but that’s not a foundation for a robust file sharing network.

I am not a mailman though, who surely have special protection. If you want an analogy, I would rather go the "carry a closed package for an anonymous stranger through airport security" danger way.

The danger is just too big, as my sibling commenter says.

Not sure this is like it.

If Uber Package driver delivers a package of drugs - pretty sure he won't get to jail as it will be trivial to prove he didn't put is there and had no idea.

You can, though, kinda.

In your mailman example, it would be like the FBI announcing exactly what the envelope looks like, uniquely identifiable, and if you encounter this letter to report it immediately or else your complicit. Or at least, that's the fear.

Yes, if it's encrypted you have no idea, but if anyone ever found out what was in it you can know who ever transmitted it. Unless everyone re-encrypts it repeatedly.. which then makes content address-ability awkward.

ipfs is a transport, not a storage system. you don't store things "on ipfs" any more than you store things "on http".

http and tcp, other transport systems, also do not have censorship resistance. it's the wrong place for it.

you can use ipfs to build a censorship resistant system, just like you can with tcp, but that is the purview of a higher layer.

A new version of IPFS would be both transport system and storage.

I don't think it's possible to reasonably to maintain layering while adding privacy and censorship resistance.

This is sort of being upset at your mop because it makes a bad vacuum. These goals are not directly part of ipfs.

Or you could just use Freenet, thus not re-inventing the wheel.

> that's fine, it means IPFS isn't for them.

This sentiment also applies to your argument, i.e. IPFS isn't fit for your purpose; and that's fine, it means IPFS isn't for you.

There are a whole bunch of censorship-resistant, plausibly-deniable systems out there (e.g. I run FreeNet from time to time)

> Both of those could be enabled by combining data blocks semi-randomly. Ie. rather than downloading the data you're looking for, you download a block of data containing what you're looking for and some other data

What you're looking for is Oblivious Transfer or Mix Nets. Unfortunately, no practical solutions currently exist (except for Onion Routing).

> Remember that data can be encrypted by content hash, so there is no way to know what you're storing unless you go scouring the public internet for a key to decrypt it.

Censorship does not work this way. First, content that requires censorship resistance is usually public, otherwise one can employ a number of p2p or centralized solutions to share content directly.

Public content is easy to find, so step one: you find and identify the list of nodes that serve the content. Step two: you block the nodes on a level that's available to you (depends on the country). Step three: your users are unable to use the network effectively, because half of the nodes don't work, and revert to using Facebook.

Isn't Filecoin Protocol Labs' solution to the cencorship problem?

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