Funding application responding to OTF feedback

Initial thoughts on how to respond to the OTF Dismissal email

Note: this is intended as a space for the first dump of thoughts. We'll need to iterate a few times before spamming OTF with another application.

Resources

OTF applicant Guide book

OTF mission statement

No matter what fund, fellowship, or lab you’re applying to, adherence to OTF’s mission is essential. It’s first and foremost among the criteria we consider when reviewing any application. We support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and obstruct repressive surveillance as a way to promote human rights and open societies. As long as your idea falls within our mission and gets us excited, we are committed to finding a way to support you.

Quotes and potential arguments against the dismissal email

"A more tailored focus would have been helpful. Reviewers ultimately did= not see the project's direct impact on Internet Freedom communities and us= ers living in repressive environments. "

"Furthermore, this project requires specialized technical understanding and efforts on the user side without suf= ficient input around the adoption rate and incentives to attract communities in repressive environments."

Possible Direct impacts

To support internet freedom you need to:

• Decentralise- Avoid reliance on any single data source, this reduces the opportunities for surveillance and the ability to control distribution, e.g back door a server, shut down an ISP or unplug someone's Haylix box in their garage
  
• Redundancy- Decentralisation supports this... but to be genuinely redundant there can be no bus factor. E.g if everyone is dead, the data is still distributed and accessible by those who survive without them needing to know or maintain anything
  
• Cheap- The easier it is to build, host and maintain infrastructure, the less impact there is on the destruction of that infrastructure
  
• Idiot proof-Most people don't understand much beyond entering a URL in a browser, adding data to forms or WYSIWIG editors. If you're in an oppressive country you're likely to be even less literate... e.g what I saw in Nigeria.
  
• Patternless- There should be no easy way to identify or differentiate the method of distribution when compared to what the state considers legitimate forms of distribution
  

How BtLInk has a direct impact and what we need to build to show this.

1. You can create a file completely offline, seed it within seconds and then cut off your connection again.
   Build: the one-page demo will help show this
   

2. Let anyone host a gateway+Seeder and network our gateways+seeders so they host each others content:
   Build: Potentially reconsider the mobile approach so you can do things like leave a shit phone plugged in somewhere with a prepaid data plan, it can act as a seed and a gateway until it dies or is found
   

Build: If we can make our own gateway+seeder app then we could get that app to seed anything with an infohash we recognised as from Btlink that way every random shit phone gateway

"There are also security concerns, especially =around malicious content and possible attacks."
Malicious content
*Why the fuck does the OTF care about malicious content, do they decide what that is? Not very "Open" if that's the case
*Seeding illegal or unethical material... this is a seeder and a recipient problem, it's no worse or better than what we have with conventional hosting options
*Seeding viruses or other content- if it's accessed through a browser then browser-based protections apply?
*We could have some kind of voting or heuristic censorship...e.g the gateway+seeder pings the IP it just sent a file to figure out if what it sent cooked the machine, it could also run basic scans for malware or other weird shit. We could also use PhotoDNA to shut down exploitation