Re: Smart Property

On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 10:09 PM, Tim Holborn <timothy.holborn@gmail.com>wrote:

> 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.
>
> This is interesting. Just recently I was wondering if the URI or namecoin
> could be a URI that is dereferenceable and available as linked data.
> Moreover, could it be integrated with an ontology ("classes + instances +
> arbitrary semantic relations + rules"  defined in M Sanchez's thesis) to
> form a semantic web. In Bitcoin how is communication between nodes
> accomplished? If it is some sort of Gossip protocol then adding semantic
> information could improve its speed? Oh yes, it is Gossip. (see:
> http://ifca.ai/fc14/papers/fc14_submission_71.pdf - An Analysis of
> Anonymity in Bitcoin Using P2P Network Traffic) What is meant by storage of
> the blockchain where everybody has a copy (or least a truncated copy?) of
> the blockchain. DHT are not part of Bitcoin? Fuzzy. How can one use
> semantic information, and even search over it. Can you SPARQL query the
> Bitcoin Blockchain? Can you WebID+FOAF+SSL your data so snooping eyes stay
> away from it? The Blockchain sounds like Provenance in a way. Getting into
> Read-Write-Web Stuff I think.
>