Skip to main content

How blockchain could undermine censorship - forever

xxx

On 26 October, someone stored a link to the video in a transaction of the cryptocurrency ZCoin. Cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology, which is essentially an online system of recording transactions simultaneously on multiple computers using what’s called “blocks”. Because it’s recoded in many places, it can never be entirely removed – even by the person who initiated the transaction. Through block number 111089, the Thai rap video is now visible to anyone, anywhere.

Marc Rocas, a board member of the non-profit association Blockchain Catalunya, said that information in the blockchain cannot be deleted while the network is running: “In order to shut down a blockchain network, you have to shut down all the devices, all the servers, all the computers that are running this blockchain.”

Block number 111089 carries only a link to the video, which is actually stored on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS acts as a type of alternate internet where content is not centrally stored, just as blockchain is stored on many computers. This means that, in order to fully remove the video, authorities would need to shut down all servers containing the blockchain as well as all servers containing the IPFS.

From How blockchain could undermine censorship - forever.

xxx

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

There is no excuse for not taking cards

So we went to the pub. For lunch. Seven of us. Say £20 per head. £100+ quid. Say £50 quid gross for the pub. Colleague goes to order food and drinks and pay at the bar. Apologetic barmaid comes over to explain that their “card machine” is down, so she can only accept cash. Under normal circumstances I would have simply walked out, feeling it wholly inappropriate to reward such a poorly managed establishment and, as a functioning actor in a capitalist economy, done my duty to depress their lunchtime takings. Here’s what we wanted to say: This is absurd. This is 2016 not 1916. Your card machine is down? Well, so what! Are you seriously telling me that mein host has no mobile phone number capable of registering for PingIt or PayM? That none of the staff or the pub itself have a PayPal account that I can send the money to? That neither the owners nor managers not contingency planners thought to tuck an iZettle behind the bar to use when the clunky and expensive GPRS terminal fails for o...