Bitcoin Forum

http://code.google.com/p/sneakernet/ (http://code.google.com/p/sneakernet/)

The recent case of the pirate bay founders getting imprisoned  got me thinking that bitcoin could be used to piggyback on a sneakernet. The entire pirate bay torrent database is 21gb which could be installed on a 32gb flash drive and passed around encrypted . To access the drive and unencrypt it you would have to send bitcoins to pay for the flash drive itself when you first plug it in. This means the person who handed out these drives wouldnt be losing money doing so. There would need to be some way to confirm the drive was legitimate before you sent coins though.

This means there is no actual website to attack and sue.  :D

Sneakernet ftw.

Some discussion on that with some related thoughts here:
   http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1838.0 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1838.0)

This reminds me of a sneakernet that was intentionally set up in Africa to allow residents of small towns to send & receive email, as well as request entire websites for educational research.  Once the website was captured and shipped to the distant school, a modified squid would keep a copy of that website on cache indefinately.

It would be great if a durable flashdrive could be made into the form factor of a mailable postcard, but then how would you know who to mail it to next, and how could you encourage the current user to send it to the next guy in the chain rather that keep it for himself?

Doesn't get the next one until the first one is sent and received?

As noted in other threads, we need a reliable method of importing/exporting keys.

I can see how a sneakernet would work with both engaging in transactions and confirming transactions, although its use in mining would be dubious at best.

As a stop-gap, you certainly could use a thumbdrive which contains the blk0001.dat and blkindex.dat files from an active node to receive the confirmations and come up with some system to store transaction data separately which could be "uploaded" by some node.  This drive could be passed around to several computers which  are "off the network" and perhaps even swap longer chains that come in from time to time if older data happens to be on a thumbdrive.

In terms of where to send the data, it would be essentially irrelevant as long as you are not double spending the same coins and that eventually the data gets incorporated into the main "internet" nodes.  Confirmation would obviously be substantially delayed.

This thread went over some of these somewhat related concepts and is worth reading:  http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=506.0 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=506.0)

The issue here really is one of what happens when you have isolated networks that occasionally have communication with each other with latency on the order of tens of minutes, hours, or even days.  In the case of a sneakernet that latency is on the order of weeks or even months potentially.

Unfortunately this other thread digressed into silliness, but it really is a variation of the same theme.

Sneakernet... so 80's.

This is the current gen of networking:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

Robotic courier.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1629.0

That's future gen... or we do just everything with those pressure pipes (much safer).

haha I am a child of the 80's....

The flash drive shaped like a postcard reminds me of this project  http://www.postcrossing.com/ (http://www.postcrossing.com/)

I also like the idea of combining dead drops and geocaching.

So Wikipedia has no problem maintaining a frivolous article like this but won't put up one on Bitcoin?  ???

Bitcoin is too scary

As sad as it may seem, IETF RFC 2549 has more scholarly publications, and is more widely referenced than anything for Bitcoins.  I sure hope that changes and happens much sooner than later.

This concept also is the basis for more "legitimate" networking concepts such as the "Interplanetary Internet" and other "Delay-tolerant Networks".  While it did start out as a joke and the original authors never planned on it being actually implemented or finding a useful real-world application, there is some value to thinking about the issues which such a data transmission system might introduce... because of the real-world applications that come from the concept.

(just registering to this thread)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

That did not exist when this thread was alive.