> - If I run an IPFS node, will I be hosting other people's data? What if these files are illegal? How can my "computer" (I guess a node is the terminology but whatever) be sure I won't be hosting some bad stuff?
Thats some of the reasons why i prefer the 'Dat' and torrent(be it classic or DHT) model of distribution per content, instead of IPFS which is per block.
The IPFS model make a lot of sense for cloud storage.. You might create a whole CDN based on its model where the clients dont even need to care about your backend storage layer.
But in the per-content p2p distribution model, we have the 'page-rank' effect, where popular or important stuff, curated by human reasoning of whats popular and important.
This model has worked pretty well with torrent, and public interest should drive the p2p storage model, where by using blocks, you lose some of the control and the context. And to see how this is a problem, the IPFS folks created the Filecoin to deal with the problem of the incentives, which on the 'per-content' model of Dat and Torrent, its a non-issue because of the natural page ranking indexing of content drive by public interest.
If something doesnt matter much, it will go away with time, just like our human brain works.
(Of course, if IPFS add some form of indexing of content by public interest on top of the block system, and even let you control what you serve. That problem would be solved)
(Disclaimer: I work for Protocol Labs on IPFS and other projects [not Filecoin though])
I'm not sure I understand what's different in the way "seeding" or "hosting" of data in Dat and Torrents compared to IPFS. All those requires you to initiate the transfer, nothing gets transferred by itself (unlike FreeNet for example).
Blocks in IPFS is just a detail that a file bigger than X MB gets split up into many smaller "files" so they can be reused between files and simpler to transfer. It has nothing to do with which peers are hosting the content.
In the end, in IPFS, Dat and Torrents, you download and share content based on a ID, and that ID can mean an entire archive of content, or just one picture.
Its not the technical part. Overall i even think that technically, IPFS has a superior model. I understand it works, and how it works.
What im saying is the control of whats important in a organic form is no there yet. The protocol controls what blocks the peers serve and people dont have much of a saying into it.
But given IPFS its layered in a good design, this could be changed and the block scheduling/routing could be binded more to this organic page-rank by letting people control more which blocks they serve, being more content aware.
This could be even done in a topic level, say you are ok to serve "free software". I guess that if you guys implemented something like that, giving some control to the peers of what they serve, it will be much more easy to sell the concept to everybody.
Thats some of the reasons why i prefer the 'Dat' and torrent(be it classic or DHT) model of distribution per content, instead of IPFS which is per block.
The IPFS model make a lot of sense for cloud storage.. You might create a whole CDN based on its model where the clients dont even need to care about your backend storage layer.
But in the per-content p2p distribution model, we have the 'page-rank' effect, where popular or important stuff, curated by human reasoning of whats popular and important.
This model has worked pretty well with torrent, and public interest should drive the p2p storage model, where by using blocks, you lose some of the control and the context. And to see how this is a problem, the IPFS folks created the Filecoin to deal with the problem of the incentives, which on the 'per-content' model of Dat and Torrent, its a non-issue because of the natural page ranking indexing of content drive by public interest.
If something doesnt matter much, it will go away with time, just like our human brain works.
(Of course, if IPFS add some form of indexing of content by public interest on top of the block system, and even let you control what you serve. That problem would be solved)