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bluesky - Re: User Anonymity

bluesky AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: Wei Dai <weidai AT eskimo.com>
  • To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems <bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: User Anonymity
  • Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 18:30:38 -0800


On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 02:32:14PM -0800, hal AT finney.org wrote:
> 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.

I think censorship resistance will ultimately depend on market mechanisms.
Suppose each storage server charges money to deliver requested data. As a
data object is supressed and becomes rarer, its price goes up and more
servers will enter the market to serve it. What the equlibrium price turns
out to be depends on what penalties the servers face and the probability
of getting caught.

Let's talk about how to reduce the penalties (for example through
plausible deniability) or the probability of getting caught. To be
concrete, let me propose an enforcement mechanism the authorities may use.
A list of banned hashes is published. Any server found to be storing or
transporting any object that hashes to an entry in the list will be
confiscated. Now the enforcers periodicly request items on the list, and
confiscates any server that responds. This mechanism seems effective
against any conceivable storage system, so perhaps if jurisdiction
shopping can't do the job, nothing else can.




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