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Comment by deweller | Hacker News Reader

This is a use case that public blockchains could solve for us. Having a decentralized proof of digital rights ownership on a public blockchain could separate the content provider (Amazon / Google / EA) from the actual media they provide by storing it on IPFS or some other decentralized file store.

There would need to be a lot of work done to make this happen and big companies would have to get on board. It doesn't seem likely now, but it might happen with enough pressure or the right disruptive catalyst.

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So time to play the same old game: does block chain provide any value here that a separate centralized DB doesn't?

Let's see, can't you solve the exact same problem by simply having a centralized organization have a database of digital content ownership? Essentially a title record DB? Seems like it.

And how does your blockchain solution solve the problem of someone is hacking the game and needs to be banned? Can the EA ban them or do hackers get to stay for good because it's on the blockchain? And if EA can ban them at their discretion then how did the block chain solve anything here?

And so yet again someone appears to have thrown out "blockchain" when it provides zero value at all towards a solution.

Please anytime anyone proposes blockchain, please explain how it is in any way better than a separate centralized DB in your proposed use case.

Disclaimer: this is not my domain.

But wouldn’t the blockchain give a decentralised record of ownership that was protected from corruption? If a single entity owns this database, how does it fare against attacks/bad actors, or highly capitalists companies like EA going in and editing it in their best interests.

You need a truly good organisation to host that single DB and I’m not sure I tryst any of them at the moment.

(Also thought I have a cursory knowledge of blockchain technology, so please correct me if I’m off.)

After the Ethereum DAO exploit, the result was two blockchains: Ethereum Classic and Ethereum. Was that better protection against database manipulation than the existing legal system provides?

Yes, it’s much more democratic than the status quo in traditional online payment and digital asset systems. Users forked and had the choice to follow the DAO-revert chain. Another hard fork happened recently: PoS. There is still a PoW chain, for the small minority that wants to use it.

The issue is that you need to talk to EA servers to play the game, or whatever the movie is hosted etc, and at that time they can choose to accept whatever token you have. Or they can reject it. So unless the content is also decentralized you are not better off.

Easy example is that nft tokens are decentralized, but the servers hosting the actual pictures are not. So you own the token but the picture itself can go missing.

Not the case with an on-chain game! See Dark Forest.

Also not really the case with on-chain NFTs or those hosted by IPFS (where as long as 1 user has the file on disk it can be recovered and re-seeded).

Yes, but unless the blockchain stores the actual content, you’re still at the whims of the content provider to serve the content.

This isn’t really a technology problem.

Let’s say such a blockchain did exist. You buy Battlefield or some other game, years pass and EA bans your account. You want to download the game again. How are you going to do that? Sure, the blockchain is public, but EA can just maintain their own list of people to ban.

Okay, so maybe we pass a law that says that if you have a record on that blockchain companies must let you access your digital goods. You take EA to court for banning you despite having purchased the game. What’s the advantage over a database run by the government? The court trusts the government database, since they are the government, and you and EA have no choice but to listen to the court — they’re the ultimate trusted third party.

A centralized organization like EA, you mean? That is what parent is pointing out: you don’t own the assets under license.

If you want to see an example of decentralization in the context of a game, look at Dark Forest.

https://www.designboom.com/technology/dark-forest-one-of-a-k...

Neat game and tech, but I'm still left wondering what benefit blockchain actually offers here. This looks like a run-of-the-mill Facebook/Zynga space exploration game from 15 years ago. Now, I'm no fan of either of those companies, but to my knowledge a lack of trust in the centralized server was never an issue.

What benefit justifies the drastically increased costs and reduced speeds from moving this on-chain?

Benefits: decentralized, censorship resistant, permissionless. Can’t have your account suspended, assets censored, or API key revoked by the game publisher. Can decide to build competing clients on top of the same shared structure.

Whether it’s “worth it” depends on your view. Dark Forest and L2 blockchains are much, much less expensive than a lot of modern games. The graphics are not impressive, but it’s not really relevant—anybody could build a better client; and many games can succeed despite limited graphics, such as Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft.

> A centralized organization like EA, you mean?

Not like EA because that wouldn't be a separate organization / 3rd party.

The only interesting thing OP is asking for is someone other than the game company to maintain digital title tracking. That is a reasonable request. The same way your city might have a database of who owns title's for our house. A centralized database owned by a 3rd party.

But none of that has anything to do with a blockchain or being distributed. Continuously people keep mixing up having 3rd party ownership (which sometimes does help solve problems) with a blockchain (which 99 time out of 100 adds tons of complexity and usually zero or negative value). That's the key distinction being made here.

Shifting the burden from the game developer to a walled garden store with digital assets (like Apple or Steam) has also not proven ideal.

>So time to play the same old game: does block chain provide any value here that a separate centralized DB doesn't?

Thank you for this. Reminds me of the form someone came up with about "Here's why your spam solution won't work" that was posted many times on slashdot in the '90s.

I just consider myself the owner of the content once I have paid for it, regardless of platform. I also consider that as meaning I have carte blanche to gain possession of that content however I see fit, since I have paid for it. Torrents and cracks to the rescue, no need for blockchain technobabble.

IPFS is an open network. Putting it on there would be like putting it on a public FTP server, which would be way simpler

Your solution is equivalent to letting customers download their game installer after logging in and giving them a license key to unlock with, something we already can do, except your idea includes 10,000 more steps

> IPFS is an open network. Putting it on there would be like putting it on a public FTP server, which would be way simpler

Not that I agree this is a good idea but IPFS decentralizes storage and provision of the content. A centralized server means the company can still arbitrarily block you.

The companies will block you usually by deactivating your license key - which you always have to check online with their licensing server.

Or we could just go back to license keys as proof of ownership. Blockchain doesn't really add anything but complexity here.

this seems like an awfully complicated alternative to just letting you download a file.

The hard part isn't the prove who owns what, it's coordinating with the actual providers to have them all agree to the same database and actually honor it

> big companies would have to get on board

Will never happen.

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