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Comment by DanAndersen | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what happens when someone adds copyright-infringing material into the blockchain. Seems like governments would be all too ready to consider all Bitcoin users to be pirates, and they tend to be less understanding of the concept of something being unremovable from the Internet.

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Umm, good point. I don't have an answer for that. But considering it will cost you about 60c to store a 100 byte payload, I am not sure what copyright infringment material you can put in there. Probably none.

So for now, I will say I don't feel like this is of a concern

Many illegal numbers can be stored for a trivial amount of money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

DeCSS[1] comes to mind, but I think any use of the blockchain to distribute copyrighted material would be more to make a statement than a convenient way of distributing it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS

> I wonder what happens when someone adds copyright-infringing material into the blockchain.

Then everyone who's running a full bitcoin node becomes a copyright infringer TWICE - once in their blockchain cache and once in their running torrent client.

>I wonder what happens when someone adds copyright-infringing material into the blockchain.

> Undeveloped film, undeveloped videotape, and electronically stored data that can be converted into a visual image of child pornography are also deemed illegal visual depictions under federal law.

From http://www.justice.gov/criminal/ceos/citizensguide/citizensg...

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