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RE: Steemit, Investors and ... ? Who?
Shame on me! I thought this task was taken care of by the witness, who are paid from the reward pool. I didn't know it was a voluntary job. That makes it even more valuable than the investors, because investors are in it for profits (too).
Great article, resteemed!
PS: I guess you missed a "not" in this sentence: "Monied investors are the only investors on Steemit"
Yes, I did miss a "not" there, thanks for the correction. When I write this and proof read it I missed it. Thanks. But yes, it's entirely volunteer based. ;) I'd wager most witnesses actually don't run an IPFS node of their own though I'm very sure some do at the very least. Sorry it took so long to respond, I still have bandwidth issues.
No problems, sir! I'm not on Steemit all the time either, even though I must admit it's very addictive. Maybe, just because it as my first week here :)
I run an IPFS node because I want to make the world a better place. It's why I host space for Freenet Project as well, where you can coincidentally also find a complete mirror of my Steemit blog as well there. Freenet uses a series of hash keys for everything, from social media addresses (Sone), email, websites, etc. Just like with IPFS, Freenet also is solely static resources (minus plugins which are dynamic loading static resources stylized for email and social media).
^__^ You gonna donate towards IPFS in the form of spinning up your own node?
Honestly, I have a few concerns about running my own node.
Bottom line, I think projects like Steemit should pay for hosting. Then, it's up to the people, companies to manage the risks.
I donated a portion of my 1 tb hard disk to the node, so it's not an extra hard drive, just software that's running on my existing hardware. You can configure it to consume as much or as little of the drive as you'd prefer.
I wouldn't doubt that there's illegal things possibly even on my own hard disk on the node, but there's no way for me to check as it's encrypted with a hash that I have no access to. Same as my Freenet Project donation. So even if something illegal was on the disk on my node, I legally have an out as I have no way of telling what's on it and no way to manage it beyond killing the node.
Let's say worst case scenario I believe you and I can agree on being the worst possible thing. Child porn. Let's assume someone uploaded an hour long video of them fiddling kids. How that file would be distributed is a redundant copy, a little bit of it on my node, and a little bit of it on many other nodes. So let's say my node only ends up getting 2 minutes of that disgusting video on it while it's split up among so many other nodes to offset the load and make redundancy possible. That 2 minutes of video doesn't have all the data for the video so the video result is corrupt as a standalone. It would require access to the whole of the file to really know what's contained on it.
And in order to be able to obtain the whole file, you'd actually have to be looking for it specifically or know someone who shared the hash with you.
Less serious illegal content would be piracy, you could be hosting portions of a pirated movie or cracked video game and the like. NO way to tell. However you're also likely hosting a bunch of content from various websites that are simply just offloading their content that are benign in nature.
Your explanation makes 100% sense to me, because I'm a computer programmer. The problem is if authorities want to crack down on a system like this, the first thing they would want to do is to make a sample case of an average person receiving a life-term.
Sure, an IT expert can follow how this system works, but explaining it to 12 average people in a court case would be hard. All they would understand is someone having x minutes of illegal content on their hard drive, broadcasting it to the whole word.
Yes, I know the chances are slim, but I'd rather pass this one.
There's already been lawsuits against Freenet and IPFS itself, the nodes being downloaded from aren't exactly easy to track either. So far the authorities have went directly after the main source, which is Freenet Project and IPFS.io rather than the actual nodes. The authorities have been unsuccessful because both Freenet and IPFS have legitimate legal uses, far more than anything illegal, and the argument is that any legal tool can be used for illegalities. Car salesmen don't sell a car with the expectation that a ton of pedestrians will be slaughtered with it.
Trust me, they've tried, and they've failed. Authorities have tried going after a Freenet node before, the case was quickly dismissed due to the nature of the storage being put forth in good faith of being used for legit purposes and encryption preventing knowledge of what's there.