Hi Dathon Ohm,<br /><br />I did a cursory review of your BIP proposal, not on the technical matter as there<br />is no reference implementation available, but I did one on the legalities raised<br />in the text (grep'ing the word "legal" one can find 15 references versus only 2<br />references to the word "technical").<br /><br />Under European law, there is a clearly established line of jurisprudences exonerating<br />internet service providers or hosting operators to have to install a system for<br />filtering all electronic communications passing via its services which would<br />apply indiscriminately to all its users for any kind of content (CJUE, 24-11-2011,<br />aff C-70/10 Scarlet Extended SA c/ SABAM, CJUE, 16-02-2012, aff C-260/10 SABAM c/ Netlog).<br />Rather to engage in generic filtering on the burden of services providers, courts<br />have generally yielded decisions asking for fine-grained deletion of a specific content,<br />as a safeguard of other interest at stake, notably users's right to privacy [0].<br /><br />Further, in the eventuality of an extended filtering system would have to be put<br />in place by a service provider, and if said filtering system design would be unable<br />to dissociate between legal content and illegal content, the introduction of this<br />filtering system would consistute an infringement of the freedom of expression and<br />information (CJUE, 26-04-2022, aff C‑401/19). Those judicial decisions are litteraly<br />encompassing peer-to-peer softwares in their scope, as somehow before Bitcoin, they<br />was something called Bittorent.<br /><br />Moreover, this line of jurisprudence underlights that any interference with one's<br />fundamental right of expression should be lay down under clear and precise rules<br />governing the scope of the interference. This is not a mere formality, as again<br />and again too restrictives measures are strike down (CEDH, 02-02-2016, Index.hu/Hungary,<br />aff. n° 22947/13). As far as I know, I'm not aware of any European continental<br />country that has made a legislation on how one is allowed to use his right to<br />the freedom of expression in the context of publishing stuff in a Bitcoin block.<br /><br />Under the US law, I won't risk making legal comment for now, as for anyone who is<br />following the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation from times to times, there<br />is a pending case in front of the US Supreme Court, Cox Communications, Inc vs. Sony<br />Music Entertainment specifically on the liability of Internet service providers. But<br />culturally the US are even more protective on the freedom of expression, which puts<br />an even higher legal bar for any restriction of it.<br /><br />I concur with Gregory Maxwell. There is zero need to change the consensus rules.<br /><br />In the idea one would like to limit one's responsability arising from how bitcoin<br />consensus data can be encoded or decoded to "obviously" "illegal" content (as strictly<br />defined by a specific national legislation) [1], fuzzy encoders and decoders for<br />end-to-end or point-to-point communication could be formalized as BIP documents,<br />that would put an asymmetric cost on the decoders, with the upper bound being the<br />impossibility of decoding.<br /><br />Fuzzy algorithms is not sci-fi tech it's actually what is used for Minisketch.<br /><br />Best,<br />Antoine<br />OTS hash: f0e10776d4e4d32873ca319daf3b76c8e645a0d510a6bb803bb8685292c119d4<br /><br />[0] "Those addresses are protected personal data because they allow those users to be precisely identified"<br />[1] This is not a mere technicality, under information theory, one could come up with<br />a alphanumeric encoding algorithm that could certainly yield text-based religious blaspheme<br />in a lot of countries in the world from years-old un-reorgable historical blockchain data.<br />We're all used to "The Times 03 Jan..." in the genesis block, but it's just picking hex<br />as a decoding algorithm...<br /><br /><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto" class="gmail_attr">Le mardi 28 octobre 2025 à 05:14:47 UTC, dath...@proton.me a écrit :<br/></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0 0 0 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Hi list -</div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Thanks for all of the feedback everyone!</div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">I am working on a new draft of the BIP that will hopefully address everyone&#39;s concerns and avoid the misunderstandings that have arisen.</div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">I apologize for not being able to respond to all of you, but know that I did indeed read your messages.</div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Best,</div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Dathon</div><div></div><div>
        On Monday, October 27th, 2025 at 1:58 PM, Greg Maxwell &lt;<a href data-email-masked rel="nofollow">gmax...@gmail.com</a>&gt; wrote:<br>
        </div><div><blockquote type="cite">
            <div dir="ltr"><div>The only consensus normative data encoding in Bitcoin is the order data goes into hashes.  The representations in memory, rpc, in the p2p network, etc. are already different and could be made arbitrarily different without any consensus change.  Case in point:  the data is now normally encrypted on disk and in P2P.  There are also proposals such as BIP 337: <a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0337.mediawiki" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=fr&amp;q=https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0337.mediawiki&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1761870562554000&amp;usg=AOvVaw23Ch-EWDym0KuV4Id4Wkkw">https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0337.mediawiki</a>  none of these things are consensus changes-- many aren&#39;t even bippable because they don&#39;t have interoperability considerations (e.g. representations on disk/memory).</div><div><br></div><div>Forget for a moment the (un)likelyhood that the concerns being discussed are meaningfully modulated by exactly how data is represented in p2p, memory, rpc, disk, etc.. for assumption just assume they are.</div><div><br></div><div>If so, the correct move would be to change those encodings rather than any consensus rule change--- particularly because any consensus rule method will simply be evaded, and can&#39;t provide the level of swizzling that changing the encoding can accomplish.  Encoding changes are also substantially non-coercive: people who think they&#39;re valuable can adopt them and leave other people alone.</div><div><br></div><div>Good news for everyone except those who consider coercing others to be a terminal goal. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 6:35 PM Kyle Stout &lt;<a href rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" data-email-masked>kyles...@gmail.com</a>&gt; wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Dathon,<div><br></div><div>&gt; if Bitcoin provides an officially supported method of storing arbitrary data (i.e., OP_RETURN), and the capacity of that method is large enough to store hazardous content in a contiguous format (an increase to 100kB is currently underway as Bitcoin Core 30 gains adoption), then one does not need to misinterpret the data in order to view the content.</div><div><br></div><div>This seems to be the crux of your argument. I believe it is misleading and technically unsound. It&#39;s technical theater that creates a distinction without any meaningful difference.</div><div><br></div><div>First, Bitcoin has no concept of a file viewer. To interpret <b>any</b> embedded data other to validate it against Bitcoin&#39;s rules, you must use a third party tool. Practically speaking, the differences are negligible in terms of technical difficulty, as humorously demonstrated here: <a href="https://x.com/rot13maxi/status/1963318690759192622" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=fr&amp;q=https://x.com/rot13maxi/status/1963318690759192622&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1761870562554000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1DWGh9ZEmlPAmec70ZAlKi">https://x.com/rot13maxi/status/1963318690759192622</a> . Contiguous or not, you&#39;re file carving. </div><div><br></div><div>Second, by definition, you&#39;re misinterpreting the data vis-a-vis Bitcoin since it has no native concept of &#39;image&#39;, &#39;video&#39;, etc. Arbitrary bytes are meaningless. The purpose of having OP_RETURN as a standard output is to protect the UTXO set from being abused. It isn&#39;t some kind of &#39;blessing&#39; to store files. That&#39;s absurd. As you admit, it&#39;s impossible to stop people from writing arbitrary bytes to the blockchain, so this is damage mitigation, not an invitation.</div><div><br></div><div>Third, contiguity is not a legally meaningful predicate. &quot;Your honor, we tried to limit the contiguous bytes!&quot; is simply not going to fly. The bytes exist either way, and they must be interpreted by third party software either way. If anything, this path is going to represent a voluntary self-policing that will result in more culpability. Right now, arbitrary bytes don&#39;t mean anything in Bitcoin. If it&#39;s valid, it&#39;s valid. Nodes relay opaque protocol data. If you insist on only accepting &#39;approved&#39; arbitrary bytes, you&#39;re opening the door to a knowledge/intent accusation.</div><div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div><br></div><div>Kyle</div><div><br></div><div> <br><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto" class="gmail_attr">On Monday, October 27, 2025 at 1:36:33 AM UTC-4 <a href rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" data-email-masked>dath...@proton.me</a> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Peter -
<br>
<br>Thank you for demonstrating what non-contiguous data looks like.
<br>
<br>I trust you when you say that you can parse the BIP&#39;s contents from this transaction, but all it looks like to me (and the Bitcoin network) is a UTXO broken into 31 pieces then (mostly) re-consolidated into a 0-length OP_RETURN, sending all ~100 USD in fees to the miner.
<br>
<br>Since legally hazardous content can be generated from any input data, including your 30-input consolidation transaction (as long as the correct third-party program is used), it would not make sense to hold node operators legally responsible for storing and distributing such input data.
<br>
<br>However, if Bitcoin provides an officially supported method of storing arbitrary data (i.e., OP_RETURN), and the capacity of that method is large enough to store hazardous content in a contiguous format (an increase to 100kB is currently underway as Bitcoin Core 30 gains adoption), then one does not need to misinterpret the data in order to view the content. In that case, node operators could conceivably be held responsible for possession and distribution.
<br>
<br>Since arbitrary data storage does nothing to benefit Bitcoin as permissionless money, there is no good reason to force this additional legal risk on node operators, who already face enough challenges as it is.
<br>
<br>Best,
<br>
<br>Dathon
<br>
<br>
<br>On Sunday, October 26th, 2025 at 4:43 PM, Peter Todd &lt;<a rel="nofollow">pe...@petertodd.org</a>&gt; wrote:
<br>
<br>&gt; On Sat, Oct 25, 2025 at 08:43:11PM +0000, dathonohm via Bitcoin Development Mailing List wrote:
<br>&gt;
<br>&gt; &gt; Hi list -
<br>&gt; &gt;
<br>&gt; &gt; Due to Bitcoin Core v30 gaining in popularity, it has become necessary to move forward on luke-jr&#39;s ML proposal to temporarily limit arbitrary data at the consensus level, which so far has 3 weeks with no objections:
<br>&gt; &gt;
<br>&gt; &gt; <a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/2017" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=fr&amp;q=https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/2017&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1761870562554000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3eiHz7OVGVAaGgXsCK-qg3">https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/2017</a>
<br>&gt;
<br>&gt;
<br>&gt; Transaction 8e2ee13d2a19951c2777bb3a54f0cb69a2f76dae8baa954cd86149ed1138cb6c
<br>&gt; contains the full text of this BIP as of writing(1), while simultaneously being
<br>&gt; compliant with that BIP.
<br>&gt;
<br>&gt; Clearly, this approach is ineffective.
<br>&gt;
<br>&gt; 1) <a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/3c718237072c107ced8c3531a487354fbdae55df/bip-%3F%3F%3F%3F.mediawiki" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=fr&amp;q=https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/3c718237072c107ced8c3531a487354fbdae55df/bip-%253F%253F%253F%253F.mediawiki&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1761870562554000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0oxyhhTbF3saLquhP2SbXH">https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/3c718237072c107ced8c3531a487354fbdae55df/bip-%3F%3F%3F%3F.mediawiki</a>
<br>&gt;
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