Even if the corporations run Knots... they are still storing and relaying and verifying "illegal material" that might, could, possibly be in blocks.

Even a non-listening node relays blocks to other nodes, right? That could have 'illegal data'? Meaning that the only way to prevent 'illegal material' is to run a pruned node... that prunes op_returns and witness script that isn't necessary.

That would probably work, although there could be 'illegal data' inside fake public keys or unspendable addresses too (that's my understanding).

If the 'solution' is to restrict what transactions get relayed... then corporations could run "blocks only" and not have a mempool.

Then they could prune their node and ditch all the op_returns... but if they're doing that what is the point of knots?