RE: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH @grumpycat
How does the law deal with a decentralized blockchain full of pilfered IP?
The Law hasn't started noticing yet IMHO. Now, the word decentralized should be taken with a pinch of salt. Lets compare with a P2P file sharing system like bittorrent and STEEM is not that decentralized. The blockchain lives on some 400 witness servers which is nothing compared to say the pirated copies of a popular movie. I am not mentioning about cats or dogs or any of the arguments like the monetary distribution. From a technical stand point, ~400 servers is in no way a decentralized system. A lot of the witness servers are hosted by couple of providers and the whole thing is super easy for 'law'. But the good thing or bad thing about STEEM for now is may be some 10% of the content is copyright violated and thats too small compared to the piracy elsewhere.
With regard to decentralization, I've also seen a number of posts made to the Interplanetary File system (IPFS). I don't know how much of that violates copyrights, but from what I can see from the white paper on the subject, IPFS is highly resistant to censorship and it is decentralized.
Have you considered IPFS as decentralized storage system as a source for content linked to on Steemit? I'm not even sure if I have phrased the question right...But I hope you understand what it is that I'm asking.
you know what, I actually wanted to add IPFS to my original comment. But I wanted to make it simpler as people generally tell me that I make things complicated by adding too many things :-D
Yes, IPFS is & has proven that their claims are true.
Further, IPFS has a mechanism to deliver blockchains over the IPFS network in a transparent way. I haven't tested it and haven't understood it enough. So I can't make any more comments. But I am doubtful how fast it will be for something like Graphene blockchain (Bitshraes, STEEM, GOLOS, EOS).
Yes and DTube is already doing it. Suprisignly steemit.com is storing its images on a centralized Amazon S3 storage.
So DTube is essentially like PirateBay with plagiarised content indexes and the content itself is stored elsewhere on IPFS. But the posts and the metadata pointing to the source of the IPFS URLs are on the STEEM blockchain. So you take down STEEM blockchain, the IPFS URLS will loose the pointers to them and they will become dangling with no way to easily access them apart from using the IPFS interface. Yes, even keeping a list of URLs and titles in a text file can act just like DTube and save the content even in the event of DMCA take down or similar of STEEM blockchain.
If you are interested in IPFS, I have pointed out few use cases below:
PS: I had written this before realizing Filecoin is the coin for IPFS.
https://steemit.com/blockchain/@bobinson/applying-blockchain-innovations-to-highly-transnational-network-dependent-services
I have to admit that I like the concept of hosting files for Filecoin. Talk about proof of stake, and it doesn't require that much energy compared to proof of work.
I also recall watching Dan Larimer give a talk about using EOS for storage, too. I was really impressed with his concept of a virtual datacenter based on blockchain technology.
I like your analogy about DTube and PirateBay. Decentralized, next to impossible to take down and censor.
As to the embrace of this new technology by the law, I have a fair amount of confidence that the succeeding generations will eventually refuse to carry on the old way of copyrights and patents. I hope that the millennials remember their experience with Napster and proceed to relax copyright law to allow for content to flourish in the digital age.
Thanks for a nice, fairly off-topic correspondence. :)
Agree on the Napster part.
I was not aware of this. I was under the impression that IPFS will be used for storage and ofcourse traditional stuff.
we will take this discussion out of this place and I feel this is a good thing that I found a good human being though things around here are not something I understand!
There's a shitload of copyrighted material on IPFS/DTube, I stay away from it.
Hello @drakos! How are things? What you mention about DTube is probably true, but I fear it applies to a large extent to Steemit too...
I know a couple Steemians making money from copying/pasting articles ONLY out of electronic magazines. They don't pretend they wrote them, but the outcome of their behaviour doesn't differ so much - using others contents without their consent.