Smart Property

Hi All,

Figured i’d flick you an email quickly re; smart property. - Few Ideas / Considerations / thought-bubbles.

There’s an array of work around the concept of giving Internet Of Things (IoT) handles on objects, signatures essentially, different medium but at some stage a relationship to transactional authorities needs to be presented (objects / actors, etc.)  

Given my focus over the years on digital media, heritage systems ( / Civics) and all sorts of other Intellectual Property related works; the biggest thing about bit coin, is not so much the ability to use the ‘coin’ to assert a currency integer/decimal, but rather its ability to assert that a specified piece of related content is either unique or moreover - has a priority date and an asserted relationship.  The type of transaction not only relates to the cost; but also the party, purpose and scope of sale (license).  Creative commons provides some resources towards these ends; however the integration standards from a commerce point of view - well, this work seems to fit well...

There are many ways of thinking about this; perhaps the easiest is the concept of copyright.  The concept that someone can assert a claim, which in-turn ends-up being stacked in the block chain, the block-chain seemingly creating a secure register of content transactions. 

I understand BitCoin can include a URI or ‘smart property’? apparently it’s turned off on the primary block-chain? i also believe to understand that part of the block chain process is about stacking transactions as part of the security mechanism, therein doesn’t really work if everyone has one running on their own servers / fully distributed; works best in high-transactional volume circumstances.

Whilst there are many alternatives on how to implement, i wanted to flag that perhaps this is a constituent that deserves additional attention (perhaps i missed it somewhere?).  

looking at the receipts (upside down; given now in Australia they like to use those receipts that fade in the sunlight) Transactions are essentially agreements between two (or more) parties that they’ll trade on mutually agreeable terms. Tangentially, everything traditionally had both identity (i.e. a cow, goat, chicken, house, piece of pottery, etc.) and for sale, the seller asserted a value to that asset by appending a price to the item (often a sticker, or perhaps a conversation of barter or negotiation). 

buy a cow - in the old days, perhaps the qualities of the cow was more important than the price sticker put on it.   gets tricky perhaps thereafter, but scope is enormous.  

Could have data about whether products were manufactured using sustainable techniques - was any toxic waste produced as part of the manufacturing cycle, properly disposed, or was it simply washed down some river in a foreign country.  Were workers paid enough to live well; or are their children dying whilst they’re making cheap t-shirts.  are the products safe, what happens in the case of a product recall; there are so many areas, the monetary value of something is perhaps only one element of what is being traded; and therein, proof that transactions occurred has a multitude of good use-cases... 

I read the concepts of digital receipt, which is a form of content association to the transactional processes;  NFR-ARTS providing one such standard http://www.nrf-arts.org/arts_download/downloads-non-members which helps track things like perishable goods from farm to dinner-plate. 

Oshani & Lalana (MIT) wrote a paper on HTTPA http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2010/Papers/IAB-privacy/httpa.pdf  which seems to have similar qualities. 

The relationship between ‘payment’ and ‘acknowledgement’ is very close.  Donations are paid with Tax Deductible receipts;  and surely, over internet (as distributed systems continue to evolve) perhaps rather than obtaining cash, one might contribute code - a widget, module, codec - or other format of value, towards a project, offering support in a manner that would still have commercial value should that contribution be put into economic (financial) terms.  

In considering the use-cases; the concept of a postage mark or stamp - being something that either has a nebulous value (je; negotiated at the time or sale?) but moreover, gives that all important 'proof of work’, associated to an entity until transacted in some way approved.  

Whether it be a artistic masterpiece, a world treasure, something invaluable. or something as simple as an alternative to registered mail, as an electronic transactional item where the assertion of a value is simply to parse an accountability requirement, i wasn’t 100% on whether the notions of ’smart property’ were easily interpreted via the spec; and/or, 

SO; whether / how the spec might associate so much potential RDF relating to an object, with the transactional info and the potential role of crypto-currency technologies in facilitating these new potential capabilities / WoT, figured i’d send a request for consideration.

Main thing to me seems to be around identifying what resources need to be protected (secured) and what can be directed at a pointed-graph(?) or something that might change with editing? Perhaps also a format? therein perhaps; version control, so if metadata records change without something like a block chain transaction representative of mutual agreement, then perhaps changes to a document might reflect that any terms of information relating to such a change, were not available on the date/time of the agreement for trade.

TimH.