[rglullis]

> Is anyone getting away with it merely because it can't be deleted? No, now the service is illegal for everyone, forever.

We could extend that "logic" to the Internet itself. Let's then just declare that because there are illegal things done in the Internet, all of it is illegal. Also, the only reason we are not suffering any repercussion is because Uncle Sam doesn't care about us (yet).

This is nothing but a cheap rhetorical trick. Hasn't anyone called you on your bullshit before?

[smcl]

> Let's then just declare that because there are illegal things done in the Internet

The difference is that the various law enforcement agencies across the globe frequently succeed in taking sites offering child porn down and prosecute those involved. The point being made was that once it's on your immutable blockchain you can't do that.

[rglullis]

> The point being made was that once it's on your immutable blockchain you can't do that.

And? it's not because something is on a blockchain that you have to host it, much less interact with it.

[smcl]

Right but someone has to host it though, otherwise your blockchain ceases to exist doesn't it?

[rglullis]

Yes and no.

You certainly need to have people validating incoming blocks, and currently you need to have at least some nodes archiving all the data if you want to be able to reconstruct the whole history. But there is a lot of research going on in regards to state pruning, which would let nodes discard parts of the chain that are not interesting.

[astrange]

I agree if you can find a way to delete things then it's fine. That's not exactly immutable, but it may be workable, maybe.

But currently all blockchain users have to download the entire thing unless they're just accessing it through a web API, which would be "centralized" and makes them not really blockchain users.

[rglullis]

No really true for ethereum. There are "light clients" who can validate new blocks and only stores every X blocks for checkpointing.