[2018-04-02] Is it True that Anyone Owning Bitcoin, Also Own Links to Child Porn

[Vladdirescu87]

The Bitcoin blockchain has survived many accusations since its start, including ones calling it a terrorist tool and a drug dealer platform.

A research paper, contending that the blockchain platform related to the cryptocurrency carries child pornography, has attracted vast attention from the fintech community. The document also claims that anyone who runs a copy of the bitcoin software, or has a transaction history downloaded, is breaking the law.

Read the details in the article of Coinidol dot com, the world blockchain news outlet: https://coinidol.com/anyone-owning-bitcoin-own-links-to-child-pornography/

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[1Referee]

It's just another hoax set up to tarnish Bitcoin's reputation. If you can't get access to the content, which applies in this case, you don't actually hold it, and thus aren't breaking any laws. If Joe encrypts links pointing to illegal content, and send it to whatever person not knowing what it is, does that receiving party hold illegal content? No. Some people don't realize how much of these encrypted messages are stored on servers of popular services as WhatsApp, BBM, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, etc. By the logic of the stupid, these businesses will hold illegal content too, and thus are breaking the law. Has anyone, a research lab, or the authorities, actually extracted the links and files that supposedly containing or pointing to illegal content?

Quote from the article;

Among these files there is clearly objectionable content such as links to child pornography, which is distributed to all Bitcoin participants,” – a new research paper says.

It contains a pdf file, but I'm not opening it for security reasons. Can anyone who did read it, point out what the actual research is about? Is it just them seeing links and just assume it's illegal content, or did they actually view that content to come up with that conclusion? After all the time, these links may have been taken down already.

[kevoh]

It's just another hoax set up to tarnish Bitcoin's reputation.

I won't call it a hoax though as it did happen but that was way back in April 2013 and trashed on this bitcointalk thread. What I do not understand is this coinidol website resurrecting an issue long forgotten by the community!

[Karartma1]

Every Internet user right now should feel ashamed because how do you move this shit around? Internet! So do we shut down the Internet? All this is so stupid, only a childish attack vector against the bitcoin protocol

[vit05]

Why do people still insist on this unrelated story? It's exactly the same as saying that anyone using an internet connection is two steps from a file containing child pornography.

Besides, no one owns a Bitcoin. People only have access to move the Bitcoin in the public ledger.

[Gotottack]

The subject question is absolutely absurd. I do not think it is ever logical at all.

Let us put it this way. We all know that traditional fiat currency has long been used and abused by criminals worldwide due to illegal drugs. Now, does it mean all people that use traditional fiat currency have links to illegal drugs? NO.

So you see, WE people should be careful of what we are saying because it surely affects other people's lives. It is irrational to generalize things, much more when it relates to sensitive issues like that of child pornography.

[Jating]

What kind of garbage argument is this? Not everyone is a pedophile and this is another way of putting the good name of bitcoin, to associate it with child pornography and other illicit and criminal act?

If there are researches pinpointing to blockchain platform has something to do with this senseless act, then they should caught we are doing it and taking advantage of this technology.

Media today just keeps on releasing article to really hype and just for click bait only. They don't care if the news is really back up and been validated, as long as they can get clickbait and earn money, I guess its ok with them. But sorry to day that this article from coinidol  is pure bullshit and garbage.

[richardsNY]

What I do not understand is this coinidol website resurrecting an issue long forgotten by the community!

It's something that more sites are doing. It's basically the same as when we recently have seen news sites once again jump on Tether bandwagon, which is just pathetic. Funny thing is that these rehashed negative articles always pop up around the same market situations, which is when panic is ruling the market. It's no longer coincidence that these are well coordinated attacks to initiate more fear. I wouldn't even be surprised to find out if this is the result of a paid attack against this market, likely by whales. It's of course impossible to prove, but it happened too often in the same market situations to be considered coincidence as I already pointed out. Next year we'll be seeing the same shit pop up once again, where they each time add gibberish to make the article look different while in reality it's exactly the same....

[brylle34]

The Bitcoin blockchain has survived many accusations since its start, including ones calling it a terrorist tool and a drug dealer platform.

A research paper, contending that the blockchain platform related to the cryptocurrency carries child pornography, has attracted vast attention from the fintech community. The document also claims that anyone who runs a copy of the bitcoin software, or has a transaction history downloaded, is breaking the law.

Read the details in the article of Coinidol dot com, the world blockchain news outlet: https://coinidol.com/anyone-owning-bitcoin-own-links-to-child-pornography/

its a big hoax lol, we invested on bitcoin not for child porn, we invested bitcoin for our own profit and to reach our goals and be successful in life. Though there are people who do childporn, porn, illegal transaction even if you have fiat you can do that also. when i think of child porn i feel very bad for those children, those kids are innocent and they don't know what they are doing everyone should treat them right, children precious because they are God's children. Always remember that everything has karma postive or negative, it depends on you if you if you do the right thing or wrong.

[NadiaHel]

Everyone using the internet has bad stuff downloaded into their computers. This is not new, and this is not going to come to an end!! Now, that kind of pathetic attack towards bitcoin has been taking place since the very beginning of the cryptocurrency. Nevertheless, they achieve nothing, as we all have seen from the last years of tireless nonsense against the new technology.
Using child pornography in order to discredit such a great breakthrough in the field of technology, is a hoax for sure. This is enough people, do not pay attention to such pathetic attempts.

[orions.belt19]

The subject question is absolutely absurd. I do not think it is ever logical at all.

Let us put it this way. We all know that traditional fiat currency has long been used and abused by criminals worldwide due to illegal drugs. Now, does it mean all people that use traditional fiat currency have links to illegal drugs? NO.

So you see, WE people should be careful of what we are saying because it surely affects other people's lives. It is irrational to generalize things, much more when it relates to sensitive issues like that of child pornography.

I totally agree. People have exaggerated over the matter and have been spewing out fire just because the matter involves child pornography. Some even suggest that bitcoin will no longer be used because of this news.

It is simply a dark side of the use of bitcoin, just like almost in all other things. Such as in fiat which has a dark side and from time immemorial, illegal activity is being done under the nose of authorities through fiat. It cannot be said per se that the use of fiat in itself is illegal just because illegal activities are made with it.

People can choose to access the content through the use of the blockchain, and this is when people is breaking the law.

[dbers79]

One resorts to sensationalism if they don't have anything substantial to report. Tabloid fodder. Clickbait. How they con people to pay them to do this kind of research is beyond me.

[leberknecht]

Hm, i dont agree here. Its a question of the legal definition of possession. In germany for example, you dont possess something that is located on a external server where you dont have access, even though you might have a physical link to it (as you are connected to the internet). Which makes a lot of sense. You still dont possess something that is on an external server where you would have access as its not protected. Which still makes a lot of sense, otherwise everyone would possess everything-that-is-not-access-protected. But: Lets say a psychopath burglar breaks into your home and plants encrypted childporn on your hard drive. Now in the scope of something else the police raids your flat, your computer is analysed and burglar used the password 123456, the cops can decrypt the file.

This is the edgiest case i can come up with, but i think this might get pretty close to "the burglar story is so absurd that we treat the findings as hard evidence of a law-break, and not indications".

And as the raw, unencrypted data DOES sit on the BTC chain on your local computer (of course only referring to the "i run a full node at home" case all the time), the argument "ok, maybe i _could_ extract the image-file out of the blockfiles, but i wont do, so leave me alone" is... complicated. Legal wise. At least in germany. Or from the other side: if a pedophile concats all binary-data of his pics into one file, he still possess them. Which makes sense.

So, bottom line: i dont think that the discussion is absurd or bullshit, nor does the "childporn is on the internet, so is everyone with internet access a criminal now?" argument make sense. Multiple problems come together here, the missing "internet law" on the one side and the "immutable chains" on the other hand. At the moment the problem might seem abstract/absurd, but picture a world with more mature dapp's etc, where the data in the chain is actually supposed to describe more than a currency.

For example i was reminded about this problem and search bitcointalk for it when i saw that http://swarm-gateways.net/bzz:/photoalbum.eth/ is down atm, and i wondered about the reasons, then remembered the childporn in BTC-chain thing.