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posted by martyb on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the routing-around-damage dept.

Brave Becomes First Browser To Add Native Support For The Ipfs Protocol | Zdnet:

With the release of Brave 1.19 today, Brave has become the first major browser maker to support IPFS, a peer-to-peer protocol meant for accessing decentralized or censored content.

[...] Released in 2015, IPFS stands for InterPlanetary File System. It is a classic peer-to-peer protocol similar to BitTorrent and designed to work as a decentralized storage system.

IPFS allows users to host content distributed across hundreds or thousands of systems, which can be public IPFS gateways or private IPFS nodes. Users who want to access any of this content must enter an URL in the form of ipfs://{content_hash_ID}.

Under normal circumstances, users would download this content from the nearest nodes or gateways rather than a central server. However, this only works if users have installed an IPFS desktop app or a browser extension.

Brave says that with version 1.19, users will be able to access URLs that start with ipfs://, directly from the browser, with no extension needed, and that Brave will natively support ipfs:// links going forward.

Since some major websites like Wikipedia have IPFS versions, users in oppressive countries can now use Brave's new IPFS support to go around national firewalls and access content that might be blocked inside their country for political reasons and is available via IPFS.

In addition, Brave also says that its users can also install their own IPFS node with one click with version 1.19 and help contribute to hosting some of the content they download to view.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday January 20 2021, @01:24PM (6 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday January 20 2021, @01:24PM (#1102838) Homepage Journal

    Reading some of the links, IPFS has been used for some good things. And also some...not-so-good things. Any time we create a privacy oriented system, some dimwit uses it to host malware, or CP, or some other crap.

    So what happens, when you put up a node? If you manually select pages to host, well, no one is going to do that for more than their own content. If you don't have control, then your node will certainly be used to host some of those "not-so-good" things. Which may well open you up to liability.

    My quick perusal of the documentation didn't turn up any answers as to how IPFS addresses this issue. Does anyone have relevant information?

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:27PM

      by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:27PM (#1102850) Journal

      It looks interesting.

      I just went browsing through their doco and forums where they answer this. At the moment a node only hosts content that it has asked for or you specifically add unless it is a public gateway. So don't ask for illegal files and don't run a public gateway.*
      They were originally planning to have distributed sharing of pieces as a low priority background task, but that has not been implemented yet (and will default to off when it is).

      *public gateways are a bridge between IPFS and HTTP. They retrieve and serve blocks to people who don't have IPFS installed. They then end up hosting the requested blocks for a while.

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:25PM

      by shrewdsheep (5215) on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:25PM (#1102874)

      The whole ipfs thing looks almost identical to freenet, so you can have a look there for how things panned out (initiated ~ 2000). For freenet, IIRC, there is some protection by the introduction of indirections. Ultimately, similar to the tor network, the protection can only be relative. Roll your private net, if you are concerned.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:30PM (#1102878)

      If it doesn't safely host malware, CP, and drugs, it doesn't work.

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday January 21 2021, @11:30AM (1 child)

      by darkfeline (1030) on Thursday January 21 2021, @11:30AM (#1103325) Homepage

      Maybe everyone should stop trying to police what other people do on their own machines.

      And anyway, banning something doesn't actually get rid of it, you just drive it into harder to reach crevices of society. Remember when the idiots tried to ban Backpage to "protect" sex workers and "fight" human trafficking, but all they did was make it more dangerous for sex workers and harder to track down human traffickers? Mission failed successfully.

      "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of
      one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that
      oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the
      beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

      -- H. L. Mencken

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @01:02PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @01:02PM (#1114821)

        Maybe everyone should stop trying to police what other people do on their own machines.

        Tell that to microsoft who seem to be under impression that they are the world pc police who need to save us all from ourselves

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @08:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @08:19PM (#1103473)

      storj encrypts the data.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:49PM (4 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:49PM (#1102857) Journal

    From your end, at the desktop, IPFS files and resources are not readily apparent. You don't see them, so you don't ask for them. The browser doesn't send parallel requests to find those IPFS resources for you. Somewhat like TOR, you have to go in search of the resources. Unlike TOR, there doesn't seem to be a directory, however poorly TOR's directories are implemented.

    At this point in time, IPFS seems to have almost zero value to casual users. It's good that users in oppressive regimes can view Wikipedia, but I see little other good in it, at this time.

    It needs work.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:55PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:55PM (#1102860)

      So, how useful would it be to put scientific papers in there for sharing?

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:15PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:15PM (#1102869) Journal

        You can experiment, and let us know. The trick is to make the target audience aware that your papers are available via IPFS. If the audience becomes aware, then the papers should be distributed fairly rapidly.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @04:17PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @04:17PM (#1102909)

      I don't know shit about IPFS, but five minutes' effort turned up this: https://ipfs-search.com/ [ipfs-search.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:11PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:11PM (#1102866)

    Parler 2.0 on IPFS?

    If the Parler devs haven't started on it, I'm sure similar site's devs are working on an implementation. Just a matter of time. Then we'll see how distributed IPFS really is.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Spamalope on Wednesday January 20 2021, @04:05PM (3 children)

      by Spamalope (5233) on Wednesday January 20 2021, @04:05PM (#1102904) Homepage

      When ISPs block incoming ports?

      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 20 2021, @05:14PM (2 children)

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday January 20 2021, @05:14PM (#1102947) Journal

        Exactly.. If it can't blend with the rest of the noise, it's no good.

        All the ISP has to do is pass only whitelisted protocols, and with deep packet inspection, they can trivially block and redirect unauthorized encryption. The internet remains at the mercy of the ISP

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @11:57PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @11:57PM (#1103171)

          The ISP does not GAF about what you send/recv. They just want to know if they can single, double, tripple charge you for it. The other side though seems to care *deeply* what you are doing. So much so they built entire networks and datacenters to do exactly that.

          Also the default port for IPFS is 8080 and using TLS. So it should look very similar to existing traffic.

          • (Score: 1) by Mike on Thursday January 21 2021, @06:01AM

            by Mike (823) on Thursday January 21 2021, @06:01AM (#1103286)

            The other side though seems to care *deeply* what you are doing.

            The other side of what?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @04:18PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @04:18PM (#1102910)
      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 20 2021, @05:38PM (1 child)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 20 2021, @05:38PM (#1102971) Journal

        I note that the Reuters demonizes all involved, including ddos-guard. Imagine that - the press demonizing free speech.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @02:23PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @02:23PM (#1103350)

          It's because "the press", and by this I mean the oligarchy of massive companies we now call "the press", doesn't think it needs "free speech" protections. Only little guys need that. "The press" has the full backing of govt (Deep State, ruling class) and globalist billionaires and universities that are funded by globalist billionaires, the Federal Govt (Guaranteed Student Loans), and the Communist nation of China (Chinese govt programs/grants and Chinese student tuition.

          The only press that needs protection are those who do not get their funding from and therefore align with the above.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @06:40PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @06:40PM (#1103015)

    Such as America. re Parler

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @06:46PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @06:46PM (#1103022)

      Were they blocked by the government? Or dropped by their business partners?

      You can't be suggesting that the government force you to do business with anyone ...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @07:39PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2021, @07:39PM (#1103050)

        Was there tortious interference involved? Did anybody threaten their business partners?

  • (Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday January 20 2021, @10:37PM (1 child)

    by corey (2202) on Wednesday January 20 2021, @10:37PM (#1103120)

    Ah at first I thought “oh that’s what I was running on OS/2!?”. But then realised it was HPFS not IPFS...

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @05:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @05:11AM (#1103281)

      Makes you wonder if its replacement will be called "OTFS," in a way similar to "NTFS."

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