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Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by divbzero on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @05:43PM (#27453630)
IPFS would face a similar challenge as the “keep torrents seeded” problem mentioned by GP. Wouldn’t there be risk to peers who host the PDFs?
Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by Natsu on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @06:16PM (#27454013)
I sort of feel like there should be some way to use some kind of construct to get people to seed things so that others seed things for them, but I haven't seen that invented yet.
Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by miloignis on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @06:37PM (#27454209)
Been a while since I've looked at them, but IPFS with FileCoin and Ethereum Swarm had that kind of goal.

It might be beneficial to create something like what you describe without any cryptocurrency association though, and I've been mulling over possibilities for distributed systems that are inherently currency-less to avoid all of the scams that cryptocurrency attracts.

Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by Taek on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @09:09PM (#27455568)
The leader in that space is Skynet, which basically is like IPFS + Filecoin but also has dynamic elements to it, and a lot better performance + reliability.

Cryptocurrency is helpful because it allows you to incentivize people to hold the data. If you don't have cryptocurrency, you're basically dependent on altruism to keep data alive (like bittorrent, or ipfs without filecoin). Popular files do okay for a while, but even popular files struggle to provide good uptime and reliability after a few years.

On an incentivized network like Sia or Filecoin, you can have high performance and reliability without ever needing any users to keep their machines online and seeding.

Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by lobocinza on Thursday June 10, 2021 @08:29AM (#27459851)
Does it scale well? SciHub is at least 100TB.
Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by Taek on Thursday June 10, 2021 @08:41AM (#27459970)
Skynet already hosts nearly 1,000 TB of data. At 100 TB, SciHub would be material but also comfortable.
Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by zolland on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @06:31PM (#27454148)
I think seed ratios and seed time (mostly used by private trackers) attempt to solve this problem.
Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by zolland on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @06:30PM (#27454136)
What kind of risk?
Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by BelenusMordred on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @10:29PM (#27456048)
IPFS is not anonymous and like other p2p protocols shares your ip address. People seeding articles would get legal notices just like torrents now.

There's been a bit of effort to get it working over tor for years now but the fundamental design makes this difficult. Also despite all the money that has poured into filecoin this doesn't seem to be a priority.

This issue is nearly 6 years old:

https://github.com/ipfs/notes/issues/37

Re:How to circumvent Sci-Hub ISP block by divbzero on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @07:02PM (#27454484)
I was thinking legal risk. In this case the publishers are going after Sci-Hub, but in the past they have gone after individuals.