Bitcoin Full Node Operators At Risk of Criminal Prosecution
A research done by a team originating from a number of German universities has been published. The findings are quite scary for whoever runs a full node of blockchain, including Bitcoin.
The problem may arise from the fact that each transactions record can contain small amount of metadata, like subject or description. The nature of distributed public blockchain makes it impossible to police content submitted to blockchain and therefore the system is open to abuse.
This openness can lead to pollution with illegal and criminal content. Researchers have found several instances of illegal pornographic content and collections of links to child pornography websites.
Bitcoin full node operators and anyone who hosts full node may find themselves in a difficult situation as they may be held responsible for possession of illegal or criminal material. There's a potential risk of prosecution.
Bitcoin's immutability
Bitcoin's immutability assures no transaction or content can be simply removed when written and other blocks have been added to the blockchain. The research concludes that this feature pose a severe risk to the Bitcoin blockchain in the future and may also impact other cryptocurrencies with similar properties.
More details about the research can be found here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321192957_A_Quantitative_Analysis_of_the_Impact_of_Arbitrary_Blockchain_Content_on_Bitcoin
While I believe this is a mere hypothetical problem when it comes to the Bitcoin ledger, it can be a very real problem when it comes to the Steem ledger, which has as it's very purpose to offer a censorship-proof publishing arena. The official elected witnesses have not so much anonymity - at best, pseudonymity. It's not hard to guess that there is a lot of material made available on Steem without the explicit approval of the copyright holders, and I'm guessing there is quite some child porn available as well, for those who are willing to dig for it.
Yes, many blockchain products may be pliant to similar abuse. On Steemit, I believe, the content is not recorded on the blockchain. Only transactions contain pieces of metadata (URL, subject) and memos sent with Steem transfers. So the risk is there that someone may post illegal content in the memos or within the subject. I'm not sure if Steem is designed to allow for memos censorship. I'm quite sure however that the third gen blockchains like EOS or Cardano will find a solution to this problem before going mainstream. [edited]
It is.
Your reply above was recoded in transaction 3e3162c77d23cc2e764a67e5070df08c1d2d8178 which can be viewed an the steemd block explorer: https://steemd.com/tx/3e3162c77d23cc2e764a67e5070df08c1d2d8178
Only the text is (supposed to be) recorded on the blockchain. Pictures, video and audio is typically saved as links. IPFS has become a popular way to distribute such media. However, as the source article says, being in possession of links to child porn can also be a major offense in some jurisdictions. I also believe that even a written story, fiction or factual story, may be considered "child porn" in some jurisdictions. It's also possible to embed graphics as text, i.e. as base64-encoding.
You're right. So Steemit has the same problem it seems...
I'm not so sure about that. Basically, you can't have an uncensored immutable ledger without also having to accept the risks of storing "illicit information" or "Illegal numbers"
It's tricky indeed and may have some serious implications. Let's see what the smart guys come up with to address this issue (if anything)
As far as i can tell this might be covered by EOS, for Cardano, i can't tell.
Very interesting discussion btw!
As I've understood laws on child porn makes possession a crime, no matter how the suspect got hands on the material, no matter if it was by accident or intent - but still I think this is a very hypothetical problem.
Hypothetical problem or not I don't think it will be ignored in the long run. Also some jurisdictions may treat this harder than others.
Thank you for posting this, I was just about to start writing about it myself. I just read about it in this article: https://www.sciencealert.com/bitcoin-illegal-almost-everywhere-after-shocking-blockchain-discovery-child-pornography
Fell free to write your own post :) I don't claim the exclusive right to the research :) Thanks for the resteem