this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Showerthoughts
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I wish that the Internet Archive would focus on allowing the public to store data. Distribute the network over the world.
In theory this could be true. In practice, data would be ripe for poisoning. It's like the idea of turning every router into a last mile CDN with a 20TB hard drive.
Then you have to think about security and not letting the data change from what was originally given. Idk. I'm sure something is possible, but without a real 'omph' nothing big happens.
The data would be hashed so any changes would be thrown out.
Hashed by whom? Who has the source of truth for the hashes? How would you prevent it from being poisoned? .. or are you saying a non-distributed (centralized) hash store?
If centralized: you have a similar problem to IA today. If not centralized: How would you prevent poisoning? If enough distributed nodes say different things, the truth can be lost.
This is a topic that is pretty well tested. Basically the data is validated when received.
For instance in IPFS data is tracked by its hash. You request something by a CID which is just a hash.
There are other distributed networks and they all have there own ways of protecting against attacks. Usually an attack requires a huge amount of resources.
Even in ipfs, I don't understand discoverability. Sort of sounds like it still needs a centralized list of metadata to content I'd, etc.
Nah, that's the easy part. Checksum technology has been around for many decades
https://www.lifewire.com/what-does-checksum-mean-2625825
Blockchain? Prolly not a perfect solution by far, but
Huh? The public can store data on IA just fine. I've uploaded dozens of public-domain books there.
But all the data is on IA's servers. In the event their servers go down for good, that's it. There's no way to self host parts of the Archive fediverse style.
That's true, but organising and managing such a distributed form of IA would probably be a nightmare of a job. I've seen many people suggest that to IA, but they seem to be very very reluctant about the idea.
Distributed systems have come a long way. It would be possible