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bluesky - Re: User Anonymity

bluesky AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: hal AT finney.org
  • To: bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: User Anonymity
  • Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 14:32:14 -0800


Ted Anderson, <ota AT transarc.com>, writes:
> On 8 Feb 2001 23:13:56 PST Wei Dai <weidai AT eskimo.com> said:
> > If the system is popular enough so that the government cannot afford
> > to block every single node ... we can present the censors with a
> > binary choice: either block the entire system or none of it.
>
> > You can consider this as an argument for building a general purpose
> > global-scale distributed storage system that happens to be censorship
> > resistant, rather than one that's designed to be censorship resistant
> > at the cost of efficiency. The latter will not become popular enough
> > to make it too expensive to block entirely.
>
> I agree with Wei Dai. This is the right approach to reader anonymity.
> An efficient and robust system will be naturally censor-resistant
> (though not censor-proof); count on its being pervasive and
> indispensable to prevent any effective limits to what users can read.

I don't think that jurisdiction shopping can do the job. Napster would
probably not have been successful if the only people who could offer
music were located in those few countries beyond the reach of the record
industry. Most people with internet access are located in Western
countries where treaties, international business interests and common
cultures will lead to the same data being banned in all of them.

Much of the attraction of decentralized data storage comes from the
ability to share data that is legally threatened. Otherwise the many
free web portals would be adequate for most people's use.

Or do readers see P2P as being primarily about improving the efficiency
of data sharing beyond what is possible today?

Hal




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