
Can we completely anonymize and decentralize filesharing? - thebrainnetwork
http://thebrainnetwork.bitballoon.com/
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pwg
A technical solution [1] to a legal problem. If it got big enough to be
targeted by copyright holders, it would fall afoul of the "What Colour are
your bits?" problem:
[http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

[1] large copyright holders will not care that a 'weak hash' might match
multiple blocks. They will take the fact that the 'weak hash' matched a block
in their copyrighted movie to assert that the downloader was, in fact,
requesting and downloading the movie. And given the recent raid on a tor exit
node operator where the judge was not even told the IP was a tor node, even
though the police knew, means that big copyright will ignore the fact that
there 'might' be plural matches and simply argue before a judge that 'weak-
hash' matching block X of movie Y is evidence of copyright infringement. And
because of the 'What colour are your bits?" problem, arguing that weak-hash X
might also match open source file Z isn't likely to get very far due to lack
of technical knowledge on the part of the judges.

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thebrainnetwork
That might be so. But with this system it's a lot harder to figure out who was
requesting and downloading that block in the first place.

And if the proof is an incomplete hash of only a part (a block) of copyrighted
material... I don't know. I'm no legal expert, but that doesn't sound like
it's enough to actually prosecute someone.

But hey, I'm just glad someone actually took the time to read the whole thing
;)

