Although court rulings do not yet exist, legislative texts from countries such as Germany, the UK, or the USA suggest that illegal content such as [child abuse imagery] can make the blockchain illegal to possess for all users.
As a supporter of cryptocurrencies and digital rights, “fun” is not the term I would use.
The price of hard drugs, if anything, is inflated thanks to the creation of black markets, so from a valuation standpoint I don’t think crypto fans have much to worry about, but from a freedom and quality-of-life standpoint? Well, if you like the War On Drugs, you’ll probably be rooting for a War On Software too.
As an opponent of cyptocurrencies and other obviously inefficient solutions to inexistent problems, I would like to stress the word “fun”.
And I highly doubt that there will be any such issue, as with the “war on drugs”. It’s well known that there aways was a racial component to it, and drugs have a slightly more addictive effect than some digital currency that people play around with. There’s just not enough real interest in it, for people to start dealing in black markets or anything on that level, for the sake of abstract “freedoms”.
And regardless, the main point here would be that companies would think twice before jumping onto the bubble, which has been a big driving force behind Bitcoins (volatile) development over the past year or some time. If the crypto enthusiasts can’t lie to eachother anymore that it’s all about buying and selling the currency itself, well, I would be sceptical how long this libertarian wet-dream would last.
lie to eachother anymore that it’s all about buying and selling the currency itself, well, I would be sceptical how long this libertarian wet-dream would last.
Any time a disruptive technology appears that poses a threat to people’s egos or to the status quo, there is always a FUD brigade that posts complete, total nonsense.
I’m interested in Bitcoin’s value as a tool for decentralizing financial systems as well as control over digital assets, identities, SSL certificates, etc. Bitcoin is a genuinely interesting and useful invention that is already being used to do things that were impossible before.
But sure, of course, to those threatened by it (for whatever reason), it will remain, like the Internet once was to some, “a libertarian wet-dream”, a “pyramid scheme”, and is “all about buying and selling”.
Why is it so hard to understand that some people just don’t think Bitcoin is a good idea? And how come you always have to imply it’s because of a lack of knowledge or some subconscious motivation?
I used to be a big fan, and I still admire it because of it’s openness and decentralised structure. No doubt that it has theoretical potential, but it’s also oversold. Looking at the whole picture, not just the pleasant parts, trying to avoid cognitive biases, I just had to come to the conclusion that it’s not worth it. However interesting it may appear to be, and I’m really sorry that you couldn’t convince me to invest my whole life savings in Bitcoin, but it really just isn’t the right tool for the job. (And I’m not saying this because I’m afraid of it, for whatever reason)
There’s a reason after all why the price of bitcoin is measured relative to the US dollar or the Euro, and not the amount of everyday goods you can purchase with it…
Why is it so hard to understand that some people just don’t think Bitcoin is a good idea?
Nobody has said that? I’ve explicitly acknowledged that?
And how come you always have to imply it’s because of a lack of knowledge
Because it has been?
I’m really sorry that you couldn’t convince me to invest my whole life savings in Bitcoin
Again with this nonsense.
To quote myself again: “Nobody’s forcing you to use Bitcoin, lol, by all means, support the existing banking system.”
No doubt that it has theoretical potential
And practical potential. Lots of businesses are already using it to do things that weren’t possible before. I will not link you to them, because that would be to “imply it’s because of a lack of knowledge” on your part.
In your previous comment you made multiple implications that any opposition to bitcoin has to be founded on a lack of understanding or “fear”, but it couldn’t be because Bitcoin, blockchains or any other crypto alternative has objective deficiencies, which would make them unattractive.
To quote myself again: “Nobody’s forcing you to use Bitcoin, lol, by all means, support the existing banking system.”
To say this is meaningless. Nobody forces anyone to use Euros, Dollars, or whatever other currency, instead there is a compulsion to do so, because everyone else uses them. And while I conciser it very unlikely that Bitcoin would ever get anywhere near that point, I still want to insist that it isn’t good. This doesn’t mean that I think the existing banking system is great – this isn’t a black and white picture, like the one you are trying to paint.
Lots of businesses are already using it to do things that weren’t possible before.
Please stop being childish and us what has been impossible before the “invention” of bitcoin?
blockchains or any other crypto alternative has objective deficiencies
I’m very well aware of their objective deficiencies, but nowhere in this thread have I seen you point one out.
This doesn’t mean that I think the existing banking system is great
No, you’re just implying it’s greater than Bitcoin and then painting your (silly) opinion to be an objective fact.
Please stop being childish and us what has been impossible before the “invention” of bitcoin?
Surely someone as enlightened about this technology as yourself is aware that decentralized immutable ledgers didn’t appear to exist before the creation of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus algorithm?
Bitcoin may have won the the hype war but other technological tools for decentralized consensus have existed long before proof of work. Byzantine Generals/Paxos is all about distributed consensus in the face of untruthful members. And the immuable ledger in merkle tree form has been around for a very long time as well.
It does not appear to me that bitcoin is winning due to technical merit. It appears that it is winning due to PR and a critical mass of people wanting to speculate on a digital asset.
Call it “hype” or other names if you wish, none of it changes the technical reality of proof-of-work’s achievement.
It does not appear to me that bitcoin is winning due to technical merit.
It is entirely due to technical merit. You need only look at the graveyard of failedattempts.
Neither Paxos nor any of those older generation consensus algorithms have proof-of-work’s properties. They are all centralized consensus algorithms, aka “distributed consensus algorithms”, not decentralized consensus algorithms, and hence they are not capable of providing the strong immutability guarantees that proof-of-work provides, nor are they capable of distributing a token in a randomized, permissionless fashion.
But if you believe I’m full of it by all means create a Paxos Coin and see how far it goes.
I’m very well aware of their objective deficiencies, but nowhere in this thread have I seen you point one out.
I’ve mentioned energy usage, which you seem to straight out deny. I’ve pointed out that Bitcoin can’t substitute “real” money, due to it’s volatility. And then you also have it’s tendency to centralize (as one can both in terms of mining power and the richest addresses), it’s processing speed, the lack of any authority to trust, all the “get rich fast”-schemes, etc.
I should clarify, because I have just realized that I accidentally used the word “blockchain” instead of “Bitcoin”, once or twice, that my main issue is Bitcoin and related crypto currencies, especially based on Proof-of-work w/ hashing.
No, you’re just implying it’s greater than Bitcoin and then painting your (silly) opinion to be an objective fact.
It’s only “Greater” in the sense that there is no point to change everything, and that it has a background in very questionable economic theories. I am still no friend of banking or bitcoin. This is a false dichotomy.
Surely someone as enlightened about this technology as yourself is aware that decentralized immutable ledgers didn’t appear to exist before the creation of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus algorithm?
I would very much appreciate it if you wern’t so arrogant, you are really reinforcing the bad image of the bitcoin/blockchain community.
I don’t claim to be an expert, but I know enough to have an more-or-less informed opinion. I know that Bitcoin was the first successful “decentralized append-only list”, or however one want’s to call it (which I still don’t think it as spectacular and innovative as some people push it to be), but we (since I seem to be part of the majority here) still want to know what you meant by this: Lots of businesses are already using it to do things that weren’t possible before. What is possible, now, that just can’t be done in any shape or form before blockchains? All I’ve seen until now, are just decentralized (if at all) alternatives to centralized services. And while in some cases it’s interesting (distributed DNS, for example) I don’t see anything fundamentally groundbreaking about it.
And again, since you seem to be “enlightened about this technology”, I want to hear a serious opinion, and not this frankly insulting and degrading conversation. I’ve changed my mind once, from being an avid supporter to a critic, so maybe you can show me a more nuanced position?
^^ I didn’t say I was supposing anything, especially no “corrupt financial system”. Why is thinking that the environment is worth being saved, always equated with this unrelated argument?
Nor do I deny general dissatisfactions, it’s just that startup-tier “alternatives”, don’t change stuff, but instead repackage to preserve.
Yes, he’s made that clear. I am also skeptical that Bitcoin will be able to single-handedly fix the corruption, but I do think it’s made a significant step in that direction.
From the naysayers, I’m only seeing nonsense, and nothing helpful.
Replace the Fed’s stable, efficient pyramid scheme with an unstable, inefficient system with miner rewards distributed like a pyramid scheme? And with financial institutions that get hacked more often?
Nah, Im sticking with regular currency and banks. Just need to fix that at the root like with public-benefit banks, payment services, etc with no or little charge open interchange protocols.
An interchange protocol (i.e EDI) just lets people exchange goods digitally. Usually keeps the currency, organizations, and contract law of areas of operation of those involved. Swift is main provider for traditional systems with lots of services on top. If just transfers and open, Interledger would be a decent example. Bitcoin gives you transfer but replaces foundation of existing system in way that eliminates its benefits. So, it’s not just an exchange protocol.
A pyramid scheme generates massive profit for those on top of the hierarchy of payment or control by the design of the scheme. Usually each level gets a fraction less than those above it. The scheme is sustained by bringing more people in with their money who don’t get the benefits they were promised. Bitcoin’s mining is structured like that with the stable currency what’s promised but not delivered. Other classes of fraud involve selling people on investing into something that will go nowhere so the traders and speculators can make piles of money on it. You’re right that calling it a pyramid scheme is nonsense: it’s like a pyramid scheme, gambling ring, and series of pump n dump mini-schemes all combined into one designed to drag out for quite a while as the gamblers and legitimate users all keep putting effort into it hoping it’s something else. At least, that’s what the output of the system looks like when compared to traditional currencies and investment bubbles
I’m curious how many of you are banking in Bitcoin entirely knowing it’s worth about just a little more or less each day than it was when you put it in there. Just like a stable, competitive currency instead of a media-driven stock or something with a value going all over the place.
Bitcoin gives you transfer but replaces foundation of existing system in way that eliminates its benefits.
Unsubstantiated claims don’t impress me.
Bitcoin’s mining is structured like that with the stable currency what’s promised but not delivered.
Lies. Show me anywhere in the whitepaper or on Bitcoin.org or in any of Core’s messaging where profits are promised.
The reality is miners often mine at a loss, and know they will be doing so. The system is designed to reach equilibrium, with the cost of mining approaching the profit derived thereof.
It is nothing like a pyramid scheme. It is no more a pyramid scheme than companies who mined for gold are a pyramid scheme.
Again, the word “pyramid scheme” has an established definition, one that does not fit gold or nearly identical assets like bitcoin.
A pyramid scheme (commonly known as pyramid scams) is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products or services. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal.
Bitcoin is a decentralized consensus protocol with no leader, it is incapable of being a pyramid scheme.
If a scammer exists who says “buy _____, it’s going to give you great profits!”, that doesn’t make whatever you put in the blank a pyramid scheme, it just makes that person a scammer.
Next you’ll probably tell me why Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, and I’ll be happy to explain to you why you’re wrong about that too. But you can spare us both the suffering by just reading the definition.
Ah, my mistake, I thought you were saying “the price of hard drugs would be inflated compared to the absence of a black market”, which doesn’t make sense, but I think you were actually saying “the price of hard drugs would be inflated with respect to a legal market”, which is probably true (modulo taxation and the exact rules of how that market is regulated)
OP_RETURN doesn’t have enough room for child porn, so all this is referring to is links to websites that host such things. The blockchain itself doesn’t contain CP.
Actually, reading the paper more closely, it seems some amount of data (60kb worth?) might’ve been spread across multiple transactions. So yes, if you take enough pixels and stitch them together in the right order you might be able to create a picture of anything.
Eventually someone sane will step in and point out that if you run the blockchain through a JPEG viewer you will not, in fact, get child porn, but a crashed computer.
I thought this was already known; could have swore I heard about this before somewhere. Maybe people were just referring to the links/urls?
I don’t see that as being a huge issue since storing large amounts of data in a blockchain doesn’t really scale. Just ask the guy who made BitMessage, but it does raise a lot of interesting questions about illegal content and distributed/decentralized content.
A better example is FreeNet. If you run FreeNet, you may be distributing illegal content, but it’s impossible for you or anyone to know because of the way the data is encrypted, stored and transmitted.
It’s 2020, an intrepid team of heroic researchers has convinced Germany to outlaw Bitcoin due to allegations that child pornography can be reconstructed by combining parts of its blockchain…
As if on cue, a band of troublemakers calling themselves “Anonymous” realizes they can ban all Internet services through this newfound legal reasoning and begins sharing XOR’d images of cat pictures and anime avatars to targeted social networks.
After waiting a few months for the viral images to proliferate across several prominent websites, Anonymous releases via pastebin a sequence of instructions revealing that if one is to XOR any of cat pictures 1 through 500 with anime avatars 1 through 2000, the resulting image will be illegal under German law.
Then, the social network took the content down so fast that some blockchain advocates were still talking about what Anonymous did like it was still happening. The social media groups argued to lawmakers and courts that rapid response to such content is one of the strong points of their network design: centrally-controlled, mutable state in a distributed system that merely simulates immutability with high-integrity, high-availability services. They point out that Bitcoin moved much more slowly on their best day. They point out they had been handling problems like this a long time keeping ethics in mind.
After being quickly defeated, Anonymous started on their next trolling operation designed to get publicity among a subset of the masses while not being noticed by elites who control the world. And changing nothing as usual since that kind of work can’t be done talking on 4chan all day. ;)
I have no outrage about fintech or risks. Child abuse is orthogonal to my point. The point is immutable stores with decentralized control make crime harder to fight when it invokves keeping something illegal in immutable storage. Centralized or non-immutable alternatives dont. Feel free to debate that point about the tech’s design instead of the tangents and rhetoric you were bringing into this.
You can have those traits with an audit trail with distributed checking. Those existed before blockchains. They were efficient and without blockchain drawbacks, too.
The reason child abuse is orthogonal is that we’re having a discussion about what tech protocols are good at or not in terms of blocking illegal content within the protocol. You bringing up who abuses children will not help anyone analyze the effectiveness of a protocol. Now you’re equating me focusing on the tech in a tech discussion with supporting that extra child abuse you brought up. A false equivalennce and disgusting example of sophistry.
https://lobste.rs/s/p2wc5y shows how to encode (17th century) nude paintings in the blockchain, along with discussion about takedowns.
Arguing that the blockchain has components to stitch together anything is not a good way to talk about this: the blockchain has structure, it might not be the intended one and putting things in in a way that you can get it out again with reasonable work is distribution.
Takedown instructions are a reasonable concern and IMHO also a reasonable action within bounds. I think the immutability of the chain is it’s biggest flaw if you don’t heavily constrain what it is used for.
Eventually someone sane will step in and point out that if you run the blockchain through a JPEG viewer you will not, in fact, get child porn, but a crashed computer.
If you apply any of the viewers/editors quoted into the paper to the blockchain, you get out what you put in. You can’t put the blockchain in a JPG viewer, but you also can’t pipe a .tar or a .zip to it.
This is the worst sort of clickbait. Please just link to the underlying paper if you must. It’s a much more informative read.
News is the mindkiller.
Thank you for the link!
This risk was identified in David A. Wheeler’s SCM Security page in section talking about encumberance pollution attack.
Oh boy, this could be fun…
As a supporter of cryptocurrencies and digital rights, “fun” is not the term I would use.
The price of hard drugs, if anything, is inflated thanks to the creation of black markets, so from a valuation standpoint I don’t think crypto fans have much to worry about, but from a freedom and quality-of-life standpoint? Well, if you like the War On Drugs, you’ll probably be rooting for a War On Software too.
As an opponent of cyptocurrencies and other obviously inefficient solutions to inexistent problems, I would like to stress the word “fun”.
And I highly doubt that there will be any such issue, as with the “war on drugs”. It’s well known that there aways was a racial component to it, and drugs have a slightly more addictive effect than some digital currency that people play around with. There’s just not enough real interest in it, for people to start dealing in black markets or anything on that level, for the sake of abstract “freedoms”.
And regardless, the main point here would be that companies would think twice before jumping onto the bubble, which has been a big driving force behind Bitcoins (volatile) development over the past year or some time. If the crypto enthusiasts can’t lie to eachother anymore that it’s all about buying and selling the currency itself, well, I would be sceptical how long this libertarian wet-dream would last.
Any time a disruptive technology appears that poses a threat to people’s egos or to the status quo, there is always a FUD brigade that posts complete, total nonsense.
I’m interested in Bitcoin’s value as a tool for decentralizing financial systems as well as control over digital assets, identities, SSL certificates, etc. Bitcoin is a genuinely interesting and useful invention that is already being used to do things that were impossible before.
But sure, of course, to those threatened by it (for whatever reason), it will remain, like the Internet once was to some, “a libertarian wet-dream”, a “pyramid scheme”, and is “all about buying and selling”.
Why is it so hard to understand that some people just don’t think Bitcoin is a good idea? And how come you always have to imply it’s because of a lack of knowledge or some subconscious motivation?
I used to be a big fan, and I still admire it because of it’s openness and decentralised structure. No doubt that it has theoretical potential, but it’s also oversold. Looking at the whole picture, not just the pleasant parts, trying to avoid cognitive biases, I just had to come to the conclusion that it’s not worth it. However interesting it may appear to be, and I’m really sorry that you couldn’t convince me to invest my whole life savings in Bitcoin, but it really just isn’t the right tool for the job. (And I’m not saying this because I’m afraid of it, for whatever reason)
There’s a reason after all why the price of bitcoin is measured relative to the US dollar or the Euro, and not the amount of everyday goods you can purchase with it…
Nobody has said that? I’ve explicitly acknowledged that?
Because it has been?
Again with this nonsense.
To quote myself again: “Nobody’s forcing you to use Bitcoin, lol, by all means, support the existing banking system.”
And practical potential. Lots of businesses are already using it to do things that weren’t possible before. I will not link you to them, because that would be to “imply it’s because of a lack of knowledge” on your part.
In your previous comment you made multiple implications that any opposition to bitcoin has to be founded on a lack of understanding or “fear”, but it couldn’t be because Bitcoin, blockchains or any other crypto alternative has objective deficiencies, which would make them unattractive.
To say this is meaningless. Nobody forces anyone to use Euros, Dollars, or whatever other currency, instead there is a compulsion to do so, because everyone else uses them. And while I conciser it very unlikely that Bitcoin would ever get anywhere near that point, I still want to insist that it isn’t good. This doesn’t mean that I think the existing banking system is great – this isn’t a black and white picture, like the one you are trying to paint.
Please stop being childish and us what has been impossible before the “invention” of bitcoin?
I’m very well aware of their objective deficiencies, but nowhere in this thread have I seen you point one out.
No, you’re just implying it’s greater than Bitcoin and then painting your (silly) opinion to be an objective fact.
Surely someone as enlightened about this technology as yourself is aware that decentralized immutable ledgers didn’t appear to exist before the creation of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus algorithm?
Bitcoin may have won the the hype war but other technological tools for decentralized consensus have existed long before proof of work. Byzantine Generals/Paxos is all about distributed consensus in the face of untruthful members. And the immuable ledger in merkle tree form has been around for a very long time as well.
It does not appear to me that bitcoin is winning due to technical merit. It appears that it is winning due to PR and a critical mass of people wanting to speculate on a digital asset.
Call it “hype” or other names if you wish, none of it changes the technical reality of proof-of-work’s achievement.
It is entirely due to technical merit. You need only look at the graveyard of failed attempts.
Neither Paxos nor any of those older generation consensus algorithms have proof-of-work’s properties. They are all centralized consensus algorithms, aka “distributed consensus algorithms”, not decentralized consensus algorithms, and hence they are not capable of providing the strong immutability guarantees that proof-of-work provides, nor are they capable of distributing a token in a randomized, permissionless fashion.
But if you believe I’m full of it by all means create a Paxos Coin and see how far it goes.
I’ve mentioned energy usage, which you seem to straight out deny. I’ve pointed out that Bitcoin can’t substitute “real” money, due to it’s volatility. And then you also have it’s tendency to centralize (as one can both in terms of mining power and the richest addresses), it’s processing speed, the lack of any authority to trust, all the “get rich fast”-schemes, etc.
I should clarify, because I have just realized that I accidentally used the word “blockchain” instead of “Bitcoin”, once or twice, that my main issue is Bitcoin and related crypto currencies, especially based on Proof-of-work w/ hashing.
It’s only “Greater” in the sense that there is no point to change everything, and that it has a background in very questionable economic theories. I am still no friend of banking or bitcoin. This is a false dichotomy.
I would very much appreciate it if you wern’t so arrogant, you are really reinforcing the bad image of the bitcoin/blockchain community.
I don’t claim to be an expert, but I know enough to have an more-or-less informed opinion. I know that Bitcoin was the first successful “decentralized append-only list”, or however one want’s to call it (which I still don’t think it as spectacular and innovative as some people push it to be), but we (since I seem to be part of the majority here) still want to know what you meant by this: Lots of businesses are already using it to do things that weren’t possible before. What is possible, now, that just can’t be done in any shape or form before blockchains? All I’ve seen until now, are just decentralized (if at all) alternatives to centralized services. And while in some cases it’s interesting (distributed DNS, for example) I don’t see anything fundamentally groundbreaking about it.
And again, since you seem to be “enlightened about this technology”, I want to hear a serious opinion, and not this frankly insulting and degrading conversation. I’ve changed my mind once, from being an avid supporter to a critic, so maybe you can show me a more nuanced position?
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^^ I didn’t say I was supposing anything, especially no “corrupt financial system”. Why is thinking that the environment is worth being saved, always equated with this unrelated argument?
Nor do I deny general dissatisfactions, it’s just that startup-tier “alternatives”, don’t change stuff, but instead repackage to preserve.
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That assumes that bitcoin is fit for the purpose. I don’t believe that it is, and I suspect that zge is on the same page.
Yes, he’s made that clear. I am also skeptical that Bitcoin will be able to single-handedly fix the corruption, but I do think it’s made a significant step in that direction.
From the naysayers, I’m only seeing nonsense, and nothing helpful.
Replace the Fed’s stable, efficient pyramid scheme with an unstable, inefficient system with miner rewards distributed like a pyramid scheme? And with financial institutions that get hacked more often?
Nah, Im sticking with regular currency and banks. Just need to fix that at the root like with public-benefit banks, payment services, etc with no or little charge open interchange protocols.
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What you are bringing to the table right now is derisive comments and insults. Your antagonizing behaviour is not conducive to meaningful debate.
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An interchange protocol (i.e EDI) just lets people exchange goods digitally. Usually keeps the currency, organizations, and contract law of areas of operation of those involved. Swift is main provider for traditional systems with lots of services on top. If just transfers and open, Interledger would be a decent example. Bitcoin gives you transfer but replaces foundation of existing system in way that eliminates its benefits. So, it’s not just an exchange protocol.
A pyramid scheme generates massive profit for those on top of the hierarchy of payment or control by the design of the scheme. Usually each level gets a fraction less than those above it. The scheme is sustained by bringing more people in with their money who don’t get the benefits they were promised. Bitcoin’s mining is structured like that with the stable currency what’s promised but not delivered. Other classes of fraud involve selling people on investing into something that will go nowhere so the traders and speculators can make piles of money on it. You’re right that calling it a pyramid scheme is nonsense: it’s like a pyramid scheme, gambling ring, and series of pump n dump mini-schemes all combined into one designed to drag out for quite a while as the gamblers and legitimate users all keep putting effort into it hoping it’s something else. At least, that’s what the output of the system looks like when compared to traditional currencies and investment bubbles
I’m curious how many of you are banking in Bitcoin entirely knowing it’s worth about just a little more or less each day than it was when you put it in there. Just like a stable, competitive currency instead of a media-driven stock or something with a value going all over the place.
I see you got rid of the “open” part.
Interledger is great.
Unsubstantiated claims don’t impress me.
Lies. Show me anywhere in the whitepaper or on Bitcoin.org or in any of Core’s messaging where profits are promised.
The reality is miners often mine at a loss, and know they will be doing so. The system is designed to reach equilibrium, with the cost of mining approaching the profit derived thereof.
It is nothing like a pyramid scheme. It is no more a pyramid scheme than companies who mined for gold are a pyramid scheme.
Again, the word “pyramid scheme” has an established definition, one that does not fit gold or nearly identical assets like bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a decentralized consensus protocol with no leader, it is incapable of being a pyramid scheme.
If a scammer exists who says “buy _____, it’s going to give you great profits!”, that doesn’t make whatever you put in the blank a pyramid scheme, it just makes that person a scammer.
Next you’ll probably tell me why Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, and I’ll be happy to explain to you why you’re wrong about that too. But you can spare us both the suffering by just reading the definition.
Do you think the price of hard drugs would be lower if the market to buy and sell them didn’t exist?
Sorry, don’t think I understand the question. The market for such things has always existed, the only difference is its legality.
Ah, my mistake, I thought you were saying “the price of hard drugs would be inflated compared to the absence of a black market”, which doesn’t make sense, but I think you were actually saying “the price of hard drugs would be inflated with respect to a legal market”, which is probably true (modulo taxation and the exact rules of how that market is regulated)
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OP_RETURNdoesn’t have enough room for child porn, so all this is referring to is links to websites that host such things. The blockchain itself doesn’t contain CP.Actually, reading the paper more closely, it seems some amount of data (60kb worth?) might’ve been spread across multiple transactions. So yes, if you take enough pixels and stitch them together in the right order you might be able to create a picture of anything.
Eventually someone sane will step in and point out that if you run the blockchain through a JPEG viewer you will not, in fact, get child porn, but a crashed computer.
I thought this was already known; could have swore I heard about this before somewhere. Maybe people were just referring to the links/urls?
I don’t see that as being a huge issue since storing large amounts of data in a blockchain doesn’t really scale. Just ask the guy who made BitMessage, but it does raise a lot of interesting questions about illegal content and distributed/decentralized content.
A better example is FreeNet. If you run FreeNet, you may be distributing illegal content, but it’s impossible for you or anyone to know because of the way the data is encrypted, stored and transmitted.
It’s 2020, an intrepid team of heroic researchers has convinced Germany to outlaw Bitcoin due to allegations that child pornography can be reconstructed by combining parts of its blockchain…
As if on cue, a band of troublemakers calling themselves “Anonymous” realizes they can ban all Internet services through this newfound legal reasoning and begins sharing XOR’d images of cat pictures and anime avatars to targeted social networks.
After waiting a few months for the viral images to proliferate across several prominent websites, Anonymous releases via pastebin a sequence of instructions revealing that if one is to XOR any of cat pictures 1 through 500 with anime avatars 1 through 2000, the resulting image will be illegal under German law.
Then, the social network took the content down so fast that some blockchain advocates were still talking about what Anonymous did like it was still happening. The social media groups argued to lawmakers and courts that rapid response to such content is one of the strong points of their network design: centrally-controlled, mutable state in a distributed system that merely simulates immutability with high-integrity, high-availability services. They point out that Bitcoin moved much more slowly on their best day. They point out they had been handling problems like this a long time keeping ethics in mind.
After being quickly defeated, Anonymous started on their next trolling operation designed to get publicity among a subset of the masses while not being noticed by elites who control the world. And changing nothing as usual since that kind of work can’t be done talking on 4chan all day. ;)
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I have no outrage about fintech or risks. Child abuse is orthogonal to my point. The point is immutable stores with decentralized control make crime harder to fight when it invokves keeping something illegal in immutable storage. Centralized or non-immutable alternatives dont. Feel free to debate that point about the tech’s design instead of the tangents and rhetoric you were bringing into this.
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You can have those traits with an audit trail with distributed checking. Those existed before blockchains. They were efficient and without blockchain drawbacks, too.
The reason child abuse is orthogonal is that we’re having a discussion about what tech protocols are good at or not in terms of blocking illegal content within the protocol. You bringing up who abuses children will not help anyone analyze the effectiveness of a protocol. Now you’re equating me focusing on the tech in a tech discussion with supporting that extra child abuse you brought up. A false equivalennce and disgusting example of sophistry.
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This doesn’t affect your point but BitMessage does not use a blockchain. It’s a common misconception, probably because of the “Bit” in the name.
There’s even a service for encoding images in the bitcoin. https://news.bitcoin.com/cryptograffiti-images-blockchain/ (this is an interview with the creator with… interesting… examples)
https://lobste.rs/s/p2wc5y shows how to encode (17th century) nude paintings in the blockchain, along with discussion about takedowns.
Arguing that the blockchain has components to stitch together anything is not a good way to talk about this: the blockchain has structure, it might not be the intended one and putting things in in a way that you can get it out again with reasonable work is distribution.
Takedown instructions are a reasonable concern and IMHO also a reasonable action within bounds. I think the immutability of the chain is it’s biggest flaw if you don’t heavily constrain what it is used for.
If you apply any of the viewers/editors quoted into the paper to the blockchain, you get out what you put in. You can’t put the blockchain in a JPG viewer, but you also can’t pipe a .tar or a .zip to it.
It can and has been done in practice.