Edison Chen teaches you five major problems in content backup

Explaining decentralized publishing #DePub privately to a friend, I usually use a very politically incorrect example; but occasionally a reporter visits, so as not to scare the other party away, I dare not say it. This most politically incorrect example is actually the least political. Besides, I didn't think of a more understandable backup example, so I simply continue to use it: Edison Chen's creation.

Ironic but probably true: The largest private content backup operation in Hong Kong history, long before Apple Daily was executed, was Edison Chen's hard drive .

Below, I take Edison Chen's creation as an example to bring out the five major problems faced by folk content backup.

Five major problems

1. Incentives

Although there is no evidence, I dare to say that Edison Chen's creations, even 13 years later, still have a large number of folk backups. As long as there are enough incentives, there is never any need to worry that a certain content will completely disappear from this world. Conversely, the incentive is the first problem:

When the content itself is not attractive enough, you need to provide incentives for people to back up, because storing data costs money and effort.

2. Search

But, even though there are a lot of people storing it, if someone wants to see it (well, it's me), where do you go to find it? After all, these backups are often kept secret for legal and other reasons. This brings up the second puzzle, searching for:

Even if the content does not disappear completely, there needs to be a way to search for the content, otherwise saving it is almost equal to not saving it.

3. Completeness

Well, after I asked my friends in the WhatsApp group, several friends sent them to treasure. However, their inventory is a bit different, some repeat each other, some are only for specific friends, and the format and resolution are inconsistent. This brings up the third puzzle, completeness:

For a full backup, in addition to the content body (data), indexes and metadata are also required.

For example, books are the content ontology, and the International Book Number ( ISBN ) is the index and source material. Without the latter, it is difficult to complete the library.

In addition, the index also helps coordinate backup work, letting participants know what has been stored, what format everyone is using, and so on.

4. Integrity

After getting photos from various parties, I found that some of the photos were very similar, but slightly different. I suspected that my friend had PS and changed the protagonist to me (I see!?). This is puzzle four:

Looking at the content backup after many years, it is difficult for us to prove whether the content has been manipulated.

Not to mention years later, some events , the regime can't wait to tamper with it that day.

5. Morality

Afterwards, my friend found out that he regretted that the backup content was provided to me again, the protagonist of the second incident. This is the last and least technically solvable problem:

Content backup can preserve the precious history of mankind, and it can also bring harm or even kill people.

Generally speaking, only the content that affects the public interest or the author himself advocates to be disclosed should be backed up by the public.

Clarify the question and find the answer

The five major problems add up, and it seems to be cold water to the public who recently participated in the backup of Apple Daily. Fortunately, in addition to the fifth problem, the remaining four points can be solved more or less by blockchain and other technologies.

This article first defines several problems involved in content backup through familiar events. Otherwise, if you don't even understand the problems, the next article on how to solve the above problems will be difficult to understand.