The more general discussion is if there is a pressure point where appeals for censorship could be lobbied for.
However the elders, by design, do not know the chunk contents.
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I’m getting at them being informed of the chunk contents by the people who are upset about the chunk contents or their goons.
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There is no way to inform them, at least in code. There is also no way to query if they have these pointers apart from trying to Get the data, which you would Get if it’s there, but you won’t get to know from whom.
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I suppose the only way to tie elders to chunks is for an elder in a section to associate the IPs of elders it knows (ie those in its section) and the addresses of chunks they manage.
So elders could be used as a way to target nodes that are managing certain chunks, but this doesn’t make it easy to target and elder for a given chunk, because you need an elder in every section in order to guarantee making this link.
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Yes, if we assume byzantine Elders (as there will be) then this can be done. However non byzantine Elders won’t provide the info as they are not coded to.
It’s an important thing really, when folk say, we can tolerate up to 1/3 bad nodes, what that means is >2/3 are running the correct software and we miss that at times. So Proof a node holds a chunk is not possible as a proof will require >2/3 to agree (sign) that fact. So corroboration is not possible, but potentially false allegations are. It’s quite in depth and interesting. Would police/state believe single nodes? we don’t. Which leads to →
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Torrent websites are taken down in many places using legal force even though they don’t actually provide the contents of torrents, only access to the torrent files.
So if you can know what chunks make up a file, and you can know that a chunk is in a section, and you can know the IP addresses of the elders in that section (I’m guessing this is what you mean by being able to “see” the elders?), then that sounds like enough information to legally go after the elders in the section for providing access to those chunks. Every elder would be similar to a torrent site.
Is this an issue?
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Well it gets deep really. These Elders are geographically dispersed for a start. They hold pointers but do not publish that info (the bittorrent issue), you need to know the address and ask them for it.
I don’t believe so, but who really knows the world changes. Countries could blanket ban Safe and threaten prison for anyone found to have Safe software installed and so on. It all gets a bit crazy IMO.
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And when it’s in all the core linux repos … then what! 
Bans won’t work me thinks.
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I think the geographic dispersion wouldn’t be much of an issue for those wanting to take legal action because which country the IP is in can be known by looking at it, and probably which ISP as well. I know that companies in some places send requests to ISPs for which person used a given IP address at a given time, and many ISPs comply.
Ah, right, so in the torrent analogy the elders have a role more similar to “torrent trackers” than a torrent site. I’m unsure if torrent trackers have run into legal issues.
I think they will absolutely try to go after the network by taking legal action against elders if they can. Though it will of course take years before this becomes a problem.
It might be worth trying to find a way to anonymize elders at some point. Otherwise the network might lose a huge number of nodes in certain countries once they start trying to shut down piracy on the network.
If it’s not feasible to anonymize elders, maybe being able to flip a switch in the node software to deny being promoted to elder could be a workaround for those affected.
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I don’t see how going after elders is effective in this scenario.
Firstly the elders in a section will be geographically spread, so for any jurisdiction going after enough of those in a section to cause a problem is difficult. You either have to be very lucky and find they are all in one jurisdiction of have to coordinate legal action across multiple jurisdictions.
Let’s say you succeed and cause X elders to be shut down. What happens, new elders are promoted from adults in the section, so as soon as one is shut down it is replaced. Etc.
It’s not sounding like a significant issue at this stage.
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What I mean is a single countries law is not enough.
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The people doing the work to shut down nodes on the network do not need to get the content offline, that won’t happen due to the design of the network. They just need to punish anyone they can for distributing their employer’s content without permission.
If elders start being punished in some country’s court for being elders, some people in that country will shut down their nodes. This would be bad for network, but certainly not fatal.
I agree this is not a significant issue at this stage.
I’m not worried about this shutting down the network by a far shot, but it would hinder growth.
If it’s possible to make elders anonymous, that might be a worthwhile thing to do to protect against this. If the only thing an actor can do to even attempt to hinder the network is to make it illegal, then that’s a much bigger step to take and much more likely to be met with resistance.
If all they need to do is wait for existing corporations to use existing laws to start punishing elders, then I think that will hinder network growth in some geographic areas due to fewer nodes.
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Not all of them all the time, but most of them most of the time. That is as now, but I think there is a ton we can do here. Like bitcoin mining, VPN suppliers etc. it’s an issue, but we do have some advantages as we have breaks between clients and the network as well as between elders and adults. We can build on those point when we need to, I believe.
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Are you referring to the kim dotcom case when Megaupload was taken down? Or something else? I haven’t came across other instances of that scope, although I guess there may have been some, I’d be curious if you’d any links or stories to share there.
Good to hear! 
You can check the case against The Pirate Bay, that’s the only one that comes to mind off the top of my head.
Miami going all in. Wow
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It didn’t stop TPB though did it, you can still use it today.
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This thread made me laugh!
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