Could Indecent Images on the Blockchain Spell the Demise of Bitcoin?

From NewsBTC

A team of German blockchain researchers have discovered images of child abuse on the Bitcoin blockchain. Since many network participants need to download a copy of the entire blockchain and it is entirely immutable, the legal implications of this might be damning for the world’s most popular cryptocurrency.
Indecent Content on the Blockchain Could Render it Illegal
The Bitcoin blockchain is a record of every transaction that has ever occurred on the network. One of its major value propositions is that it cannot be changed or amended by any party.

Other data can also be stored on the blockchain. Typically, this includes notes about certain transaction – perhaps what the payment was used for or other trivial information. As well as this harmless data, files and links can be uploaded to the blockchain. Unfortunately, it appears that some users have been using it to record highly illegal data. This includes indecent images of children.

The discovery was made by blockchain specialists at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany. They managed to find over 1,600 files that exist on the Bitcoin blockchain. According to reports in The Guardian, at least eight of these were of sexual content. One of these examples is thought to be depicting a victim of child abuse. Another two contain links to dark web repositories of child pornography. Finally, 142 of files link to other illegal services on the dark web.

This poses a very real issue for Bitcoin. Since miners and validation nodes need to store the entire blockchain on their computer systems, they are essentially in possession of illegal content. In a recent paper, the researchers explained the implications that the storage of such content on the blockchain could pose for Bitcoin in the future:

This is an issue I first worried about for Steem but the same reason it isn't a problem for Steem is the same reason it won't be for bitcoin. The images themselves are not on the blockchain. Links are not images. Authorities can go after those that are servicing the url being linked to and disable it. Once that has been done the link on the blockchain will result in a harmless 404 error.

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Interesting read, you had me scared for a little bit. Until I read about the links and authorities going after the the operators of the URL's...

So really this becomes a positive thing for bitcoin. Because shady characters conducting dodgy transactions through bitcoin will actually Have a recorded log that cannot be deleted or modified, that could potentially catch some of them out.

Interesting that you brought up steemit though, I have only considered the positives of "no censorship" hadn't stopped to consider the ramifications of it.

Plus I'm still learning alot about all of this, so sometimes my mind interprets things and runs off on tangents lol.

Love your work @contentjunkie

I finish your content reading . Now I realise it's really helpful for us .

But you can store files on the block chain. You can uuencode them (or use other text based encoding) the same way you would for a usenet newsgroup or e-mail.

But some of the files they found were images, not links to images. Images can certainly be stored directly in blockchain, isn't that how dMania works? And dTube stores videos right?

Nope, the size limit is too small. At best you could fit some pixel art on the blockchain.

Checked dTube's FAQ and dMania's (which is less clear) and it looks like you're right. That is good.

Probably a concern for wherever the files actually are stored though... but that's their problem! ;)

Now a decentralized storage system like Sia or Storj is a completely different story. I'm not sure how they plan to deal with it.

Yeah, I mined a little Sia but that thought alone stopped me from considering "hosting."

Truly disgusting.

Also, is someone trying to bring down bitcoin by "contaminating" the blockchain?

Nothing would surprise me anymore.

Amazing that more people aren't talking about this - but I guess most crypto-enthusiasts don't want to know. This is why I think our witnesses should be interested in what goes into the Steem blockchain.

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