Saturday, April 26, 2014

DHT

Not mine.. Pulled from Reddit.

> it's their perceived lost revenue that keeps them awake at night.

Monty Python got fed up with folks uploading their videos to Youtube.  So, they created a channel and uploaded lots of famous clips themselves.  [Their DVD sales increased 23,000%](http://www.fastcompany.com/1146469/youtube-monty-python-videos-boost-dvd-sales-23000)

"Piracy" is free advertising.

In reality, the entire concept of a "web server" is wrong.  The web should be a big Distributed Hash Table File System.  All data should be referenced by info-hash instead of URL.  Human readable tag trees or "file directories" can be associated with the info hashes and passed around to give the abstraction required for dynamism.  With store-and-forward all data can be deduplicated for archival or for Disruption Tolerant Network.  The Internet stores many copies of itself in caches, so the "server" idea is already stupid.  HTTP ETags provide "not changed" detection but if the infohash is used to link to data then you already know if the copy is changed or not, no additional query need be sent.  If the hashes match, it's the same.  The more popular some data is, the more available it becomes and there's no "server bottleneck" issue.  It's DUMB that my neighbor can not pull from my browser's cache.  The cute cat video should come in from your neighbor's copy who sent you the link, or from their peer they got it from, on up the DHT hierarchy all the way to source if needded.    This way when we have folks on Mars, they won't have to wait for 30 minuets for a page to load -- unless it's a new page the planet hasn't received yet over our DTN -- [The Space Internet](http://www.nasa.gov/content/disruption-tolerant-networking/).  The first person that has the file, the rest of the planet, country, county, city, neighborhood, household can pull from.  Such design even greatly reduces OS update traffic.

The "Web" of data silos is stupid, a bad move that doesn't leverage the inherent decentralized nature of the Internet properly.  The speed of light, increasing data sizes, caching, and namespace problems will FORCE us to use Bittorrent like DHT technology.  Just sign your content with your PGP key and put it out there: No one ever needed dedicated websites -- That's not how the Internet actually works anyway behind the scenes.  Anyone can create their own "slice" of the DHT File System by creating a data-tag-tree and calling it their site.  Everyone essentially gets free collocation.

New journaling file systems on modern OSs like ZFS or BTRFS are beginning to leverage similar hash-chain features, but they still don't get it: File names should be separated from Data Storage Location.  That way you can have a file in as many Directories as you want without taking up more space.  Modifying a file just creates a new data with infohash (or a delta in reference to a prior infohash).  This way if a big file is modified, you only need to send the differences if they have the prior data.  Regular squash operations can prevent deltas from accumulating too much.

Long live The Internet, but the screw the retarding Web!  With distributed file systems you pull from peers so endpoints can't track your browsing habits (unless they include "new" content you pull in, but you have to voluntarily request that data and thus tracking is always opt-in under the DHT-FS).  Good riddance Censorship!  There is no website to "take down".  No more (D)DoS attacks either.  You can request the file all you want, and it'll just come from your next hop upstream every time.

I'm not the only one working on a Distributed File System.  Someone else may make it to market sooner than me, but it will happen.  It's as inevitable as discovery of the atom.  It's just naturally a better way to do data. My family and friends are helping me test my pre-alpha (that runs as a stand alone node & virtual file system for drop-box like functionality).  They LOVE that we don't have to go through a creepy 3rd party like Facebook to share photos and comments or backup all our important data (encrypted) between households.  They see "VortexCortex's Backup [enc]" which is a flat directory of tags to encrypted blobs, one of which is the encrypted directory tag tree.  If anything happens to my home, fire, burglary, etc.  I just plug in my devices, install the DHT-FS, and search and select backup as my "home" site and it pulls in my files again.  Don't have any hardware, I can put in my password at their house and it unlocks the directory tag tree and all the other files.  Not everyone needs to store a full copy of the backup, 10 folks each have 1/5'th of my files, which is more than enough redundancy to rebuild a full copy of my "home" site.

The main things holding back the DHT-FS and an accompanying DOS (Distributed OS) are ridiculous laws made against human nature, and against the principals of life itself: Copyright and Patents (see: respective trolls).  The only thing humans have over the apes is a better way to share ideas.  Humans are trillions of copies of a single cell, as are all life!  And we allow laws preventing duplication of information and ideas?  **Ludicrous!**

The current copyright and patents laws are not compatible with reality or economics 101: That which is in infinite supply has zero price regardless of cost to create.  Instead of charging for each user, a mechanic charges just once for the work they do to the car.  No one would accept a coin-slot installed on the ignition switch to profit in perpetuity from the unbounded benefits of work only performed once, that's what "IP" laws do.  Bits are not scarce in the Age of Information.  So, market what is scarce: The ability to create more works.  Just like a FLOSS dev, home builder, mechanic or burger joint, agree on a price up front, do the work, get paid ONCE, and give them the output of your work "for free" since you already got paid to do the work.  You have an unlimited monopoly over your work BEFORE you create it, so you don't need one afterwards. 

Market forces will correct the moronic "Intellectual Properties" futures market.  It's foolish and risky to do work for free and bet on your future success to recoup the costs of doing the work.  Burger joints and home builders don't make you something and hope for payment if you liked it.  If burgers were infinitely reproducible the Master Chefs would be marketing their labor to come up with new recipes or prepare meals, not charging everyone for using the recipes.  In fact, since recipes are not copyrightable, that's what they do today.

Besides, there's no evidence that copyrights or patents are beneficial for society: Look at the [Automotive and Fashion industries.](http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture)  They're both lucrative and innovative in design, yet are not allowed copyright or design patents!  Mathematics continues to advance without copyright or patents.  Where's the evidence that patents and copyrights are needed?  Hell, there's no evidence that these laws are not harmful!   It's unconscionable to operate the world's economy of ideas and information on an unproven and untested hypothesis that patent and copyrights are needed and good -- Especially when we have only contrary evidence.

Without patents and copyrights, if you want more money you have to **create more works**.  If you get your money up front then no amount of copying can "harm" you, it's 100% free advertising then.  It's time to do the experiment and test the IP hypothesis.  Let's end Piracy for good: Abolish Intellectual Property.

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