<story><title>An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]</title><url>https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>VMG</author><text>The data embedded in the blockchain can only be extracted using custom tools.&lt;p&gt;Custom tools can be used to extract any data from almost any other kind of other data, using steganography. You can extract illegal data from innocuous looking tweets, using the right tools.</text></item><item><author>ddalex</author><text>So the obvious bit here is that an adversarial actor can poison the blockchain with bits that make downloading, storing and processing the blockchain a highly illegal act.&lt;p&gt;This may have a chilling effect on participating in the network, thus reducing the number of nodes, and undermining the trust on the blockchain and in the coin because the reduced requirement of computing power needed to mutate the blockchain.&lt;p&gt;Accordingly a determined actor with enough resources (e.g. a nation-state) can render the bitcoin value-less and use-less at will....</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zaarn</author><text>If the extraction tools do not exceed the cryptographic complexity of a OTP cipher, I doubt that any court will accept that excuse.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the difference between taking random bits of your computer to assemble illegal content vs taking one specific set of bits and applying mere transforms to then to retrieve illegal content.</text></comment>
<story><title>An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]</title><url>https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>VMG</author><text>The data embedded in the blockchain can only be extracted using custom tools.&lt;p&gt;Custom tools can be used to extract any data from almost any other kind of other data, using steganography. You can extract illegal data from innocuous looking tweets, using the right tools.</text></item><item><author>ddalex</author><text>So the obvious bit here is that an adversarial actor can poison the blockchain with bits that make downloading, storing and processing the blockchain a highly illegal act.&lt;p&gt;This may have a chilling effect on participating in the network, thus reducing the number of nodes, and undermining the trust on the blockchain and in the coin because the reduced requirement of computing power needed to mutate the blockchain.&lt;p&gt;Accordingly a determined actor with enough resources (e.g. a nation-state) can render the bitcoin value-less and use-less at will....</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>arcticfox</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a bit of a stretch. There&amp;#x27;s no reason to obfuscate anything (unless miners are actively and intentionally censoring content) and it&amp;#x27;d be straightforward to make a browser.&lt;p&gt;For example, I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s a defense for the owner of a website to say &amp;quot;this horrible illegal content I&amp;#x27;m sharing is only accessible via a custom tool that downloads and decodes image data from me...such as a web browser.&amp;quot;</text></comment>