[2018-03-20] Cointelegraph: Researchers: Child Abuse Found On Bitcoin Blockchain

[BTRIC]

Excerpt:

Researchers from two German universities have uncovered data in the Bitcoin Blockchain which could mean anyone who downloads it is breaking the law, The Guardian reports March 20.

In a paper published by two groups from Aachen and Frankfurt University, authors claim sexual images and links to child pornography attached to Bitcoin transactions has the potential to criminalize swathes of the nascent Blockchain industry.

“Bitcoin’s blockchain contains at least eight files with sexual content. While five files only show, describe, or link to mildly pornographic content, we consider the remaining three instances objectionable for almost all jurisdictions: Two of them are backups of link lists to child pornography, containing 274 links to websites, 142 of which refer to Tor hidden services,” the paper states.

German Researchers: Child Abuse Content Found On Bitcoin Blockchain, Users Must Be Protected
https://cointelegraph.com/news/german-researchers-child-abuse-content-found-on-bitcoin-blockchain-users-must-be-protected

[MoonIsBlue]

I'm wondering about the repurcussions of this, also anyone with bad intent could start a negative PR-campagane against BTC by uploading illegal images/files/links to the BTC blockchain. Worry's me a bit.

[BTRIC]

I'm wondering about the repurcussions of this, also anyone with bad intent could start a negative PR-campagane against BTC by uploading illegal images/files/links to the BTC blockchain. Worry's me a bit.

Hey, I encourage you to read this thread in the development thread about this issue (and the earlier linked threads contained in there), where I asked the gurus about the technical feasibility of overwriting portions of the blockchain to destroy this information.

If it ever becomes a real problem, there can be changes to selectively prune out the bad parts.  But also note that these images are not just plainly viewable in the blockchain, you'd need to write special code to extract and assemble them into the bad stuff.

Here's the thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3168045.0

Best regards,
Ben