Re:OpenBazaar 2.0, powered by IPFS
by tylersmith on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @07:54PM
(#16703234)
Listings are not pushed to unwillimg nodes. Nodes only pull and cache content they explicitly load. If you load something that isn't something you want to provide to the network you can clear your cache.
We do operate a few nodes that accept content updates from user nodes but we can manage what is and isn't hosted there. They're not really "super" nodes because anybody can host them and have nodes push data to them.
OpenBazaar is not like BitTorrent but more like Tor hidden services. As a node, you do not host any content that isn’t yours. When you visit a store, you traverse through the network and communicate directly with the owner of the store.
So, the legal liability of each store rests with the store.
Re:OpenBazaar 2.0, powered by IPFS
by tylersmith on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @07:56PM
(#16703253)
This is not quite correct. It does actually work a lot like BitTorrent. When a node loads content it begins to serve it it to other users as well. This cache can be purged by the user.
But isn't it fragmented so it is only serving chunks and not the whole thing?
Re:OpenBazaar 2.0, powered by IPFS
by tylersmith on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @10:36PM
(#16704100)
Yes, data is fragmented and served in chunks just like Bittorrent. You might only serve small chunks of any given piece of data, and as a downloader you may be downloading different chunks from different peers.
Are the chunks encrypted or obscured? That is, could an adversary with local access to the node determine what object a particular chunk is part of? How about an adversary that can see traffic, but not the node's storage?
They aren't, how would you encrypt them so the local user could read them but someone with local access couldn't? You'd have to ask the user for a password every time the service started up, which would be terrible UX.
I presume that it works similar to the BitTorrent network where there are nodes and supernodes? I also assume that if someone creates a listing, it gets distributed automatically to many different nodes on the network.
So if that's the case, and an illegal sex trafficking listing gets created, how do you ensure that innocent nodes or supernodes on the network don't become liable for the criminal listings that may inevitably popup?