The idea of buffering data by transmitting it somewhere far, bouncing it off a moon or whatnot, and using that distance of radio waves as your memory is my favourite thing ever.
For reference, the combined formulas are C=d×B×log_2(1+(Dc÷4πdf)²×S÷N)÷c. And lim->∞ d×ln(1+1÷d²) unfortunately = 0. (Curiously, attempting to store more information by increasing bandwidth -- and thus center frequency -- suffers the same limitation.)
(Wolfram Alpha isn't forthcoming yet with a closed-form solution for the optimal distance...)
Yes, things spread over distance. However, building quintillions of tiny sensors and spewing them across immense distances, and using it as a spread-array sensor net would enable capture that might otherwise elude us.
This is why I don't like "prevent" as a term here, even though I 100% get your reason for using it. 300 years ago, some might have cited innumerable reasons why the distance to the moon "prevents" us from ever getting there! After all, it would take a ship+sail centuries to cross the void, everyone would be dead!
Another one is "The Hundred Light Year Diary", by Greg Egan.