IPFS is the Distributed Web

A peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol to make the web faster, safer, and more open.

How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain’s legal block

Catalonia, with Barcelona as its capital, is currently one of Spain’s seventeen autonomous communities. It has a long story of pro-independence movements, and has even declared itself independent in the past. Nowadays, the political climate is very heated up. A majority of catalan people want to hold a referendum for independence, with a significant share of the population supporting independence. Long story short, Catalonia ended up unilaterally organizing a referendum on its independence, which would be held on October 1st. The vote has been declared illegal by Spain’s courts, and the Spanish government is doing everything it can to stop it. One of Spain’s actions to try to stop the vote has been to block all websites supporting it. This includes national police forces raiding ISPs, seizing control of a number of websites offering information about the referendum, and even prosecuting people who cloned those. Where to vote? People are usually told where to vote through an official postal mail notification. However, the official postal carrier correos is state-controlled, and hence it would immediately seize those notifications should the catalan government send them. With any referendum-related websites being promptly shut down and no possibility for postal mail, how is the catalan government supposed to notify people their assigned polling stations Catalonia’s answer: Catalonia’s solution involves IPFS, some crypto and some ingenuity. Here is the resulting website (as of Sep. 27): Referèndum 2017. Let’s see how it works!

Source: IPFS is the Distributed Web

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