Re: [Trans] Putting illegal stuff in an append only ledger

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor <[e-mail]>]

On Tue 2018-03-20 19:12:04 -0400, Tao Effect wrote:
> I don't think it's a real problem, just another week, another social
> attack on Bitcoin from those who are heavily invested in seeing
> Bitcoin die.
>
> The reason why it's not a legitimate issue are here:
>
> https://lobste.rs/s/walhsk/child_abuse_imagery_found_within_bitcoin#c_xf6oor
>
> And here:
>
> https://lobste.rs/s/walhsk/child_abuse_imagery_found_within_bitcoin#c_76hm8v
>
> But that will not stop people from pretending it is.

IIUC, the webforum comments that these links point to argue that because
there is work required outside the blockchain to assemble the toxic
data, the data in question doesn't *just* reside in the blockchain.  Is
that right, or do you have another interpretation?

I don't see how it follows from this particular situation that there
would be no way to put toxic data in the global append-only ledger that
Bitcoin depends on.  Do you think that there is some principled reason
why the blockchain can avoid ingestion of toxic data of any form,
whether it's (depending on your jurisdiction) CP or "intellectual
property" or blasphemy or hate speech or …?

Does your argument for why the bitcoin blockchain is defended against
this hold for arbitrary global append-only datastructures, or is it
specific to bitcoin?

Regards,

          --dkg