Re: [Blocks-development] FAQ entry: What do I do if I get a cease-and-desist letter?

[<lu...@et...>]

* Spencer Jr., Michael wrote:
> Suppose someone is investigating which content is being served on Blocks.
> They connect to me, the 'central server', remain connected for a while, and
> they receive a file advert for a copyrighted file.  Basically, suppose they
> found a reason to send a cease-and-desist letter to someone.
> 
> Since they have no way of figuring out who my connection 'DGAH' is (for
> example), the attacking lawyer sends *me* the cease-and-desist letter.  What
> would I do?

Dont' have the time to go into this in depth (*sigh*), but when I was
tossing this around with a friend we came up with the concept of "null
routes".  Your sever picks a few letters to use as fake routes, using them
to pad out the routes to local blocks to a random large length.  Example:

I've got the password to Bill Clinton's diary on my server.  When advertising
it, my server uses the route XABDADBCA to describe it.  If someone is
interested in the file, my server will see the X and know that it should
ignore the rest of the route and look on the local disk for the file.

(This is vulnerable to some pretty simple attacks that will eventually figure
out what a given server's 'null routes' are, but it's a start...)

I'd still like to take a vacation and take a good hard look at the
protocol, since I think a lot of the problems inherent in P2P will
need to be solved there.

Free time.  Wish I rmemeber what it looked like.

> Goal:  construct a scenario such that the only way to stop a certain
> filesharing network would be to control email, en masse. 

Cute.  Brings to mind the thing that someone did in the UK to point
out how stupid a law was.  (Encrypted a confession and sent it to an MP.
by the laws of the land, the MP was now breaking the law because he had
posession of details about a crime and hadn't told the police.  Or something.)

-Luke