Decentralized proof-of-storage is always flawed, and that will include IPFS's Filecoin as well.
In addition to the insoluble issue of how to not infringe copyright in decentralized file storage (and thus per my prior three posts above not be at odds with the coming Knowledge Age creators and the government), another point is how are we going to pay for decentralized file storage for all websites and content on the internet
If we say that we'll all host this content for free on our home computers and serve it via our home ISP internet connections, I have already pointed out insoluble problems:
I do think we need smarter decentralized caching for the internet which pays for itself by saving bandwidth! I do think we need to reference files by hash (perhaps with a hint for primary source url where also blame can be assigned for promulgating copyright infringement, thus all such records would need to be signed with the public key for the HTTPS certificate of the site) for permanence of references.
So perhaps there is a way to do a decentralized overlay network on top of the URL paradigm that can deal with copyright blame and respect the policies so encoded by the aforementioned signature. I am going to email Juan Benet again and pass this idea along. I am urging him and others to be less ideological and more pragmatic.
Delusional leanings such as proof-of-storage (which I thought of in 2013 and discarded because it can't be sound) and wanting to attack the establishment at any cost of nonsensical economic, political-economic, and technological issues. Let's get back to standing on solid engineering work.
In addition to the insoluble issue of how to not infringe copyright in decentralized file storage (and thus per my prior three posts above not be at odds with the coming Knowledge Age creators and the government), another point is how are we going to pay for decentralized file storage for all websites and content on the internet
If we say that we'll all host this content for free on our home computers and serve it via our home ISP internet connections, I have already pointed out insoluble problems:
- Last mile physics is such that home connections have asymmetric upload (less than download) bandwidth. Thus even if we all trade our bandwidth tit-for-tat equally, then we have collectively more download bandwidth than we have upload bandwidth. Not only does this steal from ISPs that provide more upload bandwidth, which is what I warning Bittorrent in 2008 would lead to the Communism of Net Neutrality (and they ignored me and just this month they ostensibly removed the archives when I raised this point again!), but it also is impossible to balance and thus we pay for it by hosting it on symmetrically backbone connected hosts as the internet is currently. So then how do we pay for that upload and hosting service if the owner of the files is not hosting them? Do we send microtransactions for each file we request, i.e. we put a paywall on the entire internet(!!!)? Or do we pay a Communist tax to the government (e.g. the plans for Net Neutrality) and it regulates a file store for us and also so the government can enforce copyright? I guess one can argue that bandwidth will become so cheap, we can afford to consider it free. But still someone has to pay for it and even as costs decline, bandwidth demands increase. And global bandwidth costs are I would guess in the $billions.
- There is no way to insure persistence unless one keeps a copy of the file hosted themselves, thus this sort of defeats one of the main point of decentralized file storage which is reliability of archival.
I do think we need smarter decentralized caching for the internet which pays for itself by saving bandwidth! I do think we need to reference files by hash (perhaps with a hint for primary source url where also blame can be assigned for promulgating copyright infringement, thus all such records would need to be signed with the public key for the HTTPS certificate of the site) for permanence of references.
So perhaps there is a way to do a decentralized overlay network on top of the URL paradigm that can deal with copyright blame and respect the policies so encoded by the aforementioned signature. I am going to email Juan Benet again and pass this idea along. I am urging him and others to be less ideological and more pragmatic.
Delusional leanings such as proof-of-storage (which I thought of in 2013 and discarded because it can't be sound) and wanting to attack the establishment at any cost of nonsensical economic, political-economic, and technological issues. Let's get back to standing on solid engineering work.