[multibit]

"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. Maybe China could do it, but Spain definitely cannot."

How would China do it?

[pyre]

I imagine because China has spent more time on the required infrastructure to make this happen. Spain is trying to stop something that is set to happen on Oct 1, so they have a finite amount of time to suppress the information.

[JBReefer]

By the same token, they're also not the home of a bunch of friendly companies that will implement the work, unlike China, and they don't have a long history of trying to stop the flow of information, unlike China, and they don't have a effectively infinite budget, unlike China.

I'm betting against Spain on this one. Go Catalonia!

[rocqua]

There is a huge gap between having a referendum on independence and actually being independent.

[geofft]

China has the ability (primarily at layer 8 but also at layer 2) to fail closed in the case of unknown but suspicious content from outside, and also has (again, primarily at layer 8) enough control over ISPs to demand filtering on peer-to-peer traffic. Spain doesn't have that infrastructure, and deploying it would cause enough false positives to negatively affect the economy of non-Catalan parts of Spain.

[xfs]

If IPFS is not entirely stateless the protocol to set up the state will always have identifiable information, like how TLS is easily blocked in the same way. Also, a protocol-agnostic approach is traffic analysis with machine learning (this is being used to identify custom-protocol VPNs).

[ohyes]

I'm not an IPFS expert, but my guess is they have the great firewall, so they can MITM every connection and inspect all of the packets for this type of content and do whatever to the originator/packets.

[diggan]

Does the great firewall just happen between outside and inside (Chinese) connections? With IPFS, you could have a direct connection to peers and you could have a direct link (same WiFi for example) where nothing leaves your network when downloading.

As long as one peer in the network has a outside connection, all peers could access that content via relay for example.

[ohyes]

Sure, but they can easily pressure ISPs, Spain can do that too. The problem is spain has no leverage against outside computers. China has this via great firewall.

[ttflee]

Easy. First identify some hotspot user, send the police, prosecute one or two, and let the chilling effect finish the rest.

[enriquto]

in this particular situation, this would actually encourage wider adoption due to the streisand effect

[QML]

Probably the same way China banned WhatsApp earlier this week.