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Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: fuzzy on October 14, 2014, 06:35:19 pm

Title: Associated Press DAC
Post by: fuzzy on October 14, 2014, 06:35:19 pm
It is apparent we need more marketing.  It is also apparent we have some amazing DACs that are decentralizing power in some potentially huge industries...  But one important thing seems to be missing from the equation--an Associated Press DAC.  A decentralized autonomous press DAC like the one found in the following whitepaper--https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7.msg7#msg7

It would incentivize people to create content which would at the same time promote the crypto industry while ensuring low barriers to entry remain low.  Everyone could participate and make money if they want to give people good information. 

We have opened up a poll to ask what you believe it will cost to construct one of these DACs.  Please visit the site and let us know what you think!  http://beyondbitcoinx.net/members/fuznuts/polls/view/5/

Or vote here in this very thread!

The Media doesn't need overlords...it needs DACS!
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: mint chocolate chip on October 14, 2014, 07:00:00 pm
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Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: Empirical1.1 on October 14, 2014, 07:20:20 pm
It's a good idea though I couldn't see anything easily on the link but what may work is something like a Coindesk but run as a DAC for DACs, 'DACWorld'

Advertising space is sold and used to fund content creation.
(Then it only needs seed funding to get it to the point where it's popular enough to become profitable.)

Other thoughts

-As a BitShares DAC it will also probably get a lot of good DAC content from the various BitShares DACs, maybe a lot of stuff can be announced there too in addition to the forums. (So if you're looking for a 1 stop shop for the latest DAC announcements there may be the easiest place.)
- It could also have a DACMarketCap
- It could also have a delegates section. I imagine the most popular and trusted delegates will be delegates on multiple DACs

Edit: Oh yeah, I thought DACWorld rung a bell,
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=5137.0
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: bytemaster on October 14, 2014, 07:25:22 pm
AP DAC depended upon price discovery on block chain... bit assets require price feeds.

AP DAC would need to be carefully reconsidered after lessons learned with BitUSD.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 14, 2014, 07:41:56 pm

I'd love to hear bytemaster's thoughts a bit more on these lessons learned etc.

With the idea of having a website onramp something like this could work I would think. I think the novelty of being on a blockchain could attract viewers.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: Gentso1 on October 14, 2014, 09:42:19 pm
Money could be generated from ad space, companies sponsoring, Devs looking for a new soap box to stand on to promote new coins or DACS.

They key would be keeping costs low and providing a high level of unbiased content. Their is a real market for this.

How would it be determined which AP's got paid what and for how much?
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: BitTitan on October 14, 2014, 10:31:39 pm
Money could be generated from ad space, companies sponsoring, Devs looking for a new soap box to stand on to promote new coins or DACS.

They key would be keeping costs low and providing a high level of unbiased content. Their is a real market for this.

How would it be determined which AP's got paid what and for how much?

And you guys wouldnt have to rely on news outlets who openly have no love for invictus, currently have a monopoly and loyalty to your competitors.

This should have been the second DAC released IMO. It the most strategically advantageous DAC I have seen.   Marketing funds could be used to build it too.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: Gentso1 on October 15, 2014, 04:03:15 pm
Money could be generated from ad space, companies sponsoring, Devs looking for a new soap box to stand on to promote new coins or DACS.

They key would be keeping costs low and providing a high level of unbiased content. Their is a real market for this.

How would it be determined which AP's got paid what and for how much?

And you guys wouldnt have to rely on news outlets who openly have no love for invictus, currently have a monopoly and loyalty to your competitors.

This should have been the second DAC released IMO. It the most strategically advantageous DAC I have seen.   Marketing funds could be used to build it too.
Its not really about having a outlet who has love for anyone. It is simply a outlet that does it's dammed'est to let the news of platforms, alts, miners to reach the public unbiased. In the current scene if a show gets all of its money from one source, say a mining equipment supplier that show will have to make a hard decision to report the good and bad of mining related topics. The key is many streams of revenue,a large audience and a low entry fee for start-ups to get their message out.     
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: JA on October 15, 2014, 04:22:11 pm
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Yes you have to be logged in.
Didn't know lol.
I have to change that
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: donkeypong on October 15, 2014, 04:24:07 pm
I'd rather we call it something that isn't a trademarked name (AP or Associated Press) of another entity.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: CoinHoarder on October 15, 2014, 04:58:37 pm
I'd rather we call it something that isn't a trademarked name (AP or Associated Press) of another entity.

Yes, I'd also like you guys to consider something else.

I think this is a great idea, but why stop short of a news/marketing organization? This idea could be applied to a broader use case of incentivizing people to do anything:

BTSX related services:
Create good DAC ideas
Develop code for a DAC or submit Github commits
Submit bugs and vulnerabilities
Write, edit, and improve upon DAC wiki documentation
Web site development and content
Infographics
Testing release candidates
Providing tech support
Marketing
Securing partnerships
Etc

You could expand it even further which is what I think would be really neat by incentivizing people to create things that are not related to Bitshares like Devcoin does but in a more autonomous way:
A Wikipedia alternative
Art
Music
Articles
Books
Photography
Constructive forum or reddit-like posts with substance
Ideas and research papers
Inventions
Anything that involves creativity and time spent by humans that can't be done by a computer or protocol..
Etc.

General technology related:
Write programs, plugins
Open source services
Hardware development
Testing
Etc.

Mathematical and scientific research..

The use cases are endless and only limited by our imagination. Have share holders vote on the best content and reward a certain amount of coins per day to those whose creations receive the most "up votes" a la reddit. Create a community of productive people that are incentived to be productful more so than simply voluntarily providing their time for free. The general idea being that we can incentivize people for the betterment of society in many ways.

Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 15, 2014, 05:13:06 pm

I had a similar idea where people vote on edits etc and people's contributions.

These systems need a decent way to keep out some content.  You will forever be fighting off kids who want to talk about boogers (or worse) just to annoy everyone.  How do you do that without allowing a malicious entity to censor someone?

Then there is the financing model that incentivizes the whole thing.  How do you make it so it can't be gamed ?

I'm really fascinated by the idea of a website in front of the DAC where people don't necessarily need to download the wallet and synch up to receive the experience.  That is huge.  It gives you decentralization as a tactic while keeping user experience change to a minimum.  Very powerful.  Someone could start up a combo news site/DAC.  Not sure if there is much money in that stuff right now, but having it all blockchain powered  would be pretty cool.  A sharp person might very well be able to make a decent business out of that and go beyond crypto/DAC world.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: CoinHoarder on October 15, 2014, 05:33:23 pm

I had a similar idea where people vote on edits etc and people's contributions.

These systems need a decent way to keep out some content.  You will forever be fighting off kids who want to talk about boogers (or worse) just to annoy everyone.  How do you do that without allowing a malicious entity to censor someone?

Then there is the financing model that incentivizes the whole thing.  How do you make it so it can't be gamed ?

I'm really fascinated by the idea of a website in front of the DAC where people don't necessarily need to download the wallet and synch up to receive the experience.  That is huge.  It gives you decentralization as a tactic while keeping user experience change to a minimum.  Very powerful.  Someone could start up a combo news site/DAC.  Not sure if there is much money in that stuff right now, but having it all blockchain powered  would be pretty cool.  A sharp person might very well be able to make a decent business out of that and go beyond crypto/DAC world.

I see it working like a decentralized version of Reddit, but consisting of more than links images and text.

You will have subreddits with different communities to separate everything.

Upvoting brings the best content to the top and content with little substance out of view. You could also charge a transaction fee to prevent spamming.

One part of preventing gaming of the system would be verifying identities. BM has stated the FollowMyVote DAC will have this feature, so we could tie it into that or perhaps do it separately. Supposedly it is at least possible.

That alone is not enough to prevent gaming though. One idea would be if the same group of people repeatedly up votes the same content as other people then their vote could automatically be counted as negative or them not allowed to vote. However, that may block out honest actors in the form of communities and people with similar ideology for instance..

My guess is you would need to come up with many "rules" such as this to make it work. Similar to how the Bitasset markets have rules so that they function the way they do. I'll have to think about this more, I think it could be done in one way or another.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 15, 2014, 05:43:56 pm

So you are thinking more along the lines of an aggregator DAC where the voting is what is taken care of on the blockchain ?  Something that just points to other sites using a voting system ?  People could be paid for submissions.  It would be interesting to see if people were willing to pay for the tokens for such a thing.

I'm not sure what you mean by more than images and text....  I like the idea of news on the blockchain, but something that could attach a more fiercely independent type view.  Like wikileaks sort of stuff in addition to real news.  Not sure.  Most news isn't particularly censored as it is with the internet.  With the right (or wrong) stuff your blockchain then becomes more like a torrent for censored content.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: luckybit on October 15, 2014, 05:45:39 pm
AP DAC depended upon price discovery on block chain... bit assets require price feeds.

AP DAC would need to be carefully reconsidered after lessons learned with BitUSD.

I like the concept of such a DAC but the problem is that it seems limited to text articles when most of the press will be Vlogs. If we could monetize the Vlod format I think we could all become journalists at that point.

I think the Bitshares Music DAC could be used to monetize audiostreams/podcasts like Beyond Bitcoin.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: CoinHoarder on October 15, 2014, 07:06:01 pm
So you are thinking more along the lines of an aggregator DAC where the voting is what is taken care of on the blockchain ?  Something that just points to other sites using a voting system ?  People could be paid for submissions.  It would be interesting to see if people were willing to pay for the tokens for such a thing.

Yes that is the general idea, but the content being more than just news- anything really. Perhaps the FollowMyVote DAC could be tied in to take care of the voting so that aspect of the DAC would be covered by that.

Devcoin derives its value without providing any financial incentive to Devcoin buyers other than simply supporting open source programmers and writers, and yet they have a $300,000+ market cap, albeit with very low volume and token value. I think I have an idea to financially incentivize it though and thus create larger value, market cap, and volume...

Create a social contract in between the DAC and content submitters. Anything they submit automatically become intellectual property of the DAC and the tokens represent cryptoequity in all content that is submitted. The blockchain can serve as a notary as far as proof of submission.
Pointing to other sites would work for content submission. That along with a hash of the the website/content to ensure the preservation of the content and that voting is actually for some specific content. The DAC then can profit from the content by publishing it, selling it, or implementing it themselves, etc

People that create good content can get paid immediately rather than putting in the effort required to profit from it. Immediate profit that is a sure thing could be incentive enough for people to submit content that may or may not make money. The DAC will act as a venture capital firm investing in many industries, ideas, programs, and various content. People whom have a good idea but not the time or money to follow it through can quickly sell it for a profit to the DAC, while maintaining equity in their idea or cashing the tokens out for a quick profit.

Songwriters can submit songs to be sold to record labels or artists. Art can be submitted to be sold or displayed in galleries. Photographs and Books can be printed or published online and then sold. Inventions could be patented. Articles and content that can gain website traffic will get revenue from website ads or subscription fees. Communities could be formed upon the submittal of quality forum posts with substance and thus profit from advertising revenue. The intellectual property of the DAC could be profited on in many ways depending on what type of content it is. The idea is literally limitless and only restricted by our imaginations as to what kind of content that can be submitted and profited off of by equity owners.

I'm not sure what you mean by more than images and text....  I like the idea of news on the blockchain, but something that could attach a more fiercely independent type view.  Like wikileaks sort of stuff in addition to real news.  Not sure.  Most news isn't particularly censored as it is with the internet.  With the right (or wrong) stuff your blockchain then becomes more like a torrent for censored content.
I am thinking bigger than simply a news DAC, but that could/should be a part of it. Sorry I am derailing the thread. :)
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 15, 2014, 07:21:29 pm

Most sites you can't hash the content, because there is some dynamic factor to it.  You'd have to make heuristics to find the actual content, or perhaps the author could specify how to extract it.  Neither one would work very well.

You also have to attribute ownership if you're going to start paying people for content and not just for their submission.  I don't think that is easy to do.

However having a voting for submissions DAC could be quite useful.  I wonder what the marketcap would ever reach.. Probably not that high, but perhaps.

Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: CoinHoarder on October 15, 2014, 07:43:23 pm

Most sites you can't hash the content, because there is some dynamic factor to it.  You'd have to make heuristics to find the actual content, or perhaps the author could specify how to extract it.  Neither one would work very well.

You also have to attribute ownership if you're going to start paying people for content and not just for their submission.  I don't think that is easy to do.

However having a voting for submissions DAC could be quite useful.  I wonder what the marketcap would ever reach.. Probably not that high, but perhaps.

Eh.. I just came up with the idea, the dynamics and details would need to be worked out. If you could do so I think it could be a very profitable DAC. I remember reading about notary being a use case of the blockchains for written content. I believe someone is creating one for images too to protect digital image rights for content creators. I think many different types of content could be made to work given enough thought.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 15, 2014, 07:57:40 pm

Most sites you can't hash the content, because there is some dynamic factor to it.  You'd have to make heuristics to find the actual content, or perhaps the author could specify how to extract it.  Neither one would work very well.

You also have to attribute ownership if you're going to start paying people for content and not just for their submission.  I don't think that is easy to do.

However having a voting for submissions DAC could be quite useful.  I wonder what the marketcap would ever reach.. Probably not that high, but perhaps.

Eh.. I just came up with the idea, the dynamics and details would need to be worked out. If you could do so I think it could be a very profitable DAC. I remember reading about notary being a use case of the blockchains for written content. I believe someone is creating one for images too to protect digital image rights for content creators. I think many different types of content could be made to work given enough thought.

Those are simple static things.  Webpages are very dynamic.  I like this idea though.  This is why I'm more for images + text being put ON the blockchain.  Then websites or DAC users can use the content themselves.  You'd never want to prune it so there would be issues with keeping size down.

At one point I proposed the idea of a throw-away DAC (think 3 delegates) that would allow editing something like google docs, but then the various contributions would be voted on and the pot would be split amongst them.  There was one problem I had and that is I could create the DAC, then if I have most of the voting power I end up voting for my own bullshit contributions and everyone else gets 0.  Therefore getting their work for free.  A minor problem...  This is a DAC from the same family, but meant to aid in the creation of content.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: CoinHoarder on October 15, 2014, 08:40:14 pm

Most sites you can't hash the content, because there is some dynamic factor to it.  You'd have to make heuristics to find the actual content, or perhaps the author could specify how to extract it.  Neither one would work very well.

You also have to attribute ownership if you're going to start paying people for content and not just for their submission.  I don't think that is easy to do.

However having a voting for submissions DAC could be quite useful.  I wonder what the marketcap would ever reach.. Probably not that high, but perhaps.

Eh.. I just came up with the idea, the dynamics and details would need to be worked out. If you could do so I think it could be a very profitable DAC. I remember reading about notary being a use case of the blockchains for written content. I believe someone is creating one for images too to protect digital image rights for content creators. I think many different types of content could be made to work given enough thought.

Those are simple static things.  Webpages are very dynamic.  I like this idea though.  This is why I'm more for images + text being put ON the blockchain.  Then websites or DAC users can use the content themselves.  You'd never want to prune it so there would be issues with keeping size down.

I get what you are saying, text and images are probably the easiest use cases, and perhaps using websites as the content submission would not work. I was suggesting people submit the source code of said websites so they can be reconstructed if they go offline and that could be easily notarized, but I suppose even then some images and content would not be saved. There is probably a better solution though as to content submission and notary. Perhaps the creation of Storjcoin, Maidsafe, or Ethereum will provide more functionality as to what kinds of content could be submitted and it should start out as something simpler..

At one point I proposed the idea of a throw-away DAC (think 3 delegates) that would allow editing something like google docs, but then the various contributions would be voted on and the pot would be split amongst them.  There was one problem I had and that is I could create the DAC, then if I have most of the voting power I end up voting for my own bullshit contributions and everyone else gets 0.  Therefore getting their work for free.  A minor problem...  This is a DAC from the same family, but meant to aid in the creation of content.
Sybil and large stakeholder voting manipulation risks can be mitigated by giving each person equal voting power and then verifying identities so that each real person only gets one vote. BM stated FollowMyVote will have that capability. I think FollowMyVote could work really well for this sort of proposal.. at least for the voting, this DAC would just be an extension of it by adding features on top of the voting DAC.

You could allow negative votes so someone that is trying to solicit others to collude in the voting, their vote counts for less if people make that public they can down vote their reputation. Same with someone up-voting obviously poor content.. people should be able to down vote them so their votes count for less or negative in the worst cases. A reputation system and identity verification system could solve some/most of the issues with voting.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 15, 2014, 09:09:15 pm

There does seem to be a LOT of interest in this sort of DAC.  My concern would be people spamming the DAC with bs images an so forth.  Sure we could vote them out of visibility but they still take up space on the blockchain.  I suppose you could prune data using some criteria so that the more important/interesting news could be kept for historic reasons. Although again - this gives people a tool to censor.  It always comes down to giving benevolent entities enough power to do their job but not let the trolls/censoring types to ruin it.

What we have is a web browser inside the toolkit.  With that you allow people to put up their submissions.  Perhaps some nice framework could be found that would allow people to theme their DAC's news presentation, but ideally you're going to want most people to find the site via a regular website that is pulling the data off the blockchain.  Then if people want to become nodes etc they can download the whole thing.

If you keep submitted image size down and discount possible spam issues a blockchain would work for most news.  Images would have to be kept to a small size though, but thats not that hard.

You can charge people to submit or let a group of people vote on submissions.  I don't know which approach is better.  Maybe a combination of both, to prevent people from wasting time by spamming but then also preventing someone from buying spots.......

The cool thing about it is you could have like a website that would be a technological first.  Decentralized/distributed news.  "Uncensorable".   I think this fact along if marketed right could gather a lot of exposure.  Bitcoin technology bringing you the news !  Actually it might have more application in other countries than the US.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: luckybit on October 16, 2014, 12:36:10 am
I'd rather we call it something that isn't a trademarked name (AP or Associated Press) of another entity.

Call it "Bitshares Media".


Most sites you can't hash the content, because there is some dynamic factor to it.  You'd have to make heuristics to find the actual content, or perhaps the author could specify how to extract it.  Neither one would work very well.

You also have to attribute ownership if you're going to start paying people for content and not just for their submission.  I don't think that is easy to do.

However having a voting for submissions DAC could be quite useful.  I wonder what the marketcap would ever reach.. Probably not that high, but perhaps.
Devcoin actually has Devtome so it might be possible to create a decentralized Devtome.


There does seem to be a LOT of interest in this sort of DAC.  My concern would be people spamming the DAC with bs images an so forth.  Sure we could vote them out of visibility but they still take up space on the blockchain.  I suppose you could prune data using some criteria so that the more important/interesting news could be kept for historic reasons. Although again - this gives people a tool to censor.  It always comes down to giving benevolent entities enough power to do their job but not let the trolls/censoring types to ruin it.

What we have is a web browser inside the toolkit.  With that you allow people to put up their submissions.  Perhaps some nice framework could be found that would allow people to theme their DAC's news presentation, but ideally you're going to want most people to find the site via a regular website that is pulling the data off the blockchain.  Then if people want to become nodes etc they can download the whole thing.

If you keep submitted image size down and discount possible spam issues a blockchain would work for most news.  Images would have to be kept to a small size though, but thats not that hard.

You can charge people to submit or let a group of people vote on submissions.  I don't know which approach is better.  Maybe a combination of both, to prevent people from wasting time by spamming but then also preventing someone from buying spots.......

The cool thing about it is you could have like a website that would be a technological first.  Decentralized/distributed news.  "Uncensorable".   I think this fact along if marketed right could gather a lot of exposure.  Bitcoin technology bringing you the news !  Actually it might have more application in other countries than the US.

We can use web of trust and other mechanisms. We might be able to build blogging into the Bitshares X client so more people take part in it? We could feed the news directly into Bitshares X too. Bitshares Media could pay people per blog post like how Devtome does.

Devtome does it where the more people who start blogging the less it pays to blog so this would allow the people who start doing it early to make decent money. I think if Bitshares Media is set up it should reward people who blog frequently and who start the habit early.

Beyond that the readers should be able to vote up or down articles. These votes from the shareholders and readers should determine how much the article writer gets paid. Some articles should charge a micropayment fee to readers, some a recurring subscription, some should make money from ads.

That is how I would do it anyway. I don't know if it could be done from Bytemaster's original design because I don't fully grasp how it works but I do think that with a DAC you have everything you need. You have shareholders who can vote. You have delegates who can become the journalists. You have the outside viewers who can vote. Journalist/delegates could edit each others work or work in teams.

Micropayments could be paid in BitUSD to get BitUSD circulating or in the Bitshares Media DAC internal assets. This way you could set it up so that people who blog often and have high ratings are the first to see the latest blog posts where they can then critique, edit, etc. It also rewards people who provide information with an information advantage.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: luckybit on October 16, 2014, 12:55:05 am

Most sites you can't hash the content, because there is some dynamic factor to it.  You'd have to make heuristics to find the actual content, or perhaps the author could specify how to extract it.  Neither one would work very well.

You also have to attribute ownership if you're going to start paying people for content and not just for their submission.  I don't think that is easy to do.

However having a voting for submissions DAC could be quite useful.  I wonder what the marketcap would ever reach.. Probably not that high, but perhaps.

Eh.. I just came up with the idea, the dynamics and details would need to be worked out. If you could do so I think it could be a very profitable DAC. I remember reading about notary being a use case of the blockchains for written content. I believe someone is creating one for images too to protect digital image rights for content creators. I think many different types of content could be made to work given enough thought.

Those are simple static things.  Webpages are very dynamic.  I like this idea though.  This is why I'm more for images + text being put ON the blockchain.  Then websites or DAC users can use the content themselves.  You'd never want to prune it so there would be issues with keeping size down.

At one point I proposed the idea of a throw-away DAC (think 3 delegates) that would allow editing something like google docs, but then the various contributions would be voted on and the pot would be split amongst them.  There was one problem I had and that is I could create the DAC, then if I have most of the voting power I end up voting for my own bullshit contributions and everyone else gets 0.  Therefore getting their work for free.  A minor problem...  This is a DAC from the same family, but meant to aid in the creation of content.

Files cannot and should not be stored on the blockchain. It should be stored off chain. But what you can do is use the blockchain to make sure all journalists get paid per submission. As the DAC profits so should the shareholders which includes the journalists.

The blogging platform could be a separate front end component where everyone has an identical looking blog, vlog, etc. Then over time let it be customized a bit but if you look at WordPress that is a good example of how the front end should look.

The backend should involve voting on content, reputation, social network and algorithms to recommend feeds to people.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: donkeypong on October 16, 2014, 04:38:06 am
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7.msg40384#msg40384 (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7.msg40384#msg40384)
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 16, 2014, 06:05:12 pm
Files cannot and should not be stored on the blockchain. It should be stored off chain.

Why?  Outside of blockchain bloat, why is that ?
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: luckybit on October 16, 2014, 06:51:21 pm
Files cannot and should not be stored on the blockchain. It should be stored off chain.

Why?  Outside of blockchain bloat, why is that ?

A blockchain can store hashes of the location or short encrypted messages but it is not very good for storing files. Files are better stored on something like Storj because it's very difficult to actually redundantly store data through a blockchain.

Ask Bytemaster, Toast and others if they think storing data in the blockchain makes sense. I just know it's not how I would do things.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7.msg40384#msg40384 (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7.msg40384#msg40384)

Yes we need a decentralized editing and moderation process.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 16, 2014, 07:11:55 pm
Files cannot and should not be stored on the blockchain. It should be stored off chain.

Why?  Outside of blockchain bloat, why is that ?

A blockchain can store hashes of the location or short encrypted messages but it is not very good for storing files. Files are better stored on something like Storj because it's very difficult to actually redundantly store data through a blockchain.

Ask Bytemaster, Toast and others if they think storing data in the blockchain makes sense. I just know it's not how I would do things.


It is all application dependent.   So do it "on something like storj" which hasn't been created yet and would involve some convoluted 2 token system now.  Actually it is very easy to store data on the blockchain AFAIK.  The main problem is blockchain bloat which has its own problems. 

The whole problem with just using the voting system off the blockchain is that it does nothing but add transparency to the voting.   I just don't see that as a pressing need, where as actually leveraging blockchain for anti-censorship would be interesting.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: CoinHoarder on October 17, 2014, 07:27:09 am
Re: Using block chain technology as a notary for submitted content.

These guys seem to think websites and other media are possible including videos by using "notary chains."

Then all we would need is a way to back up the data... To back up the content maybe the delegates can be used for this purpose, to store the content for the network. Each delegate would store a full copy of all content submitted. Like a read only FTP server.. create a user with read only access and only delegates have the ability to add submitted content. If any delegate alters or removes the content they can be voted out. Having 101 delegates mitigates those risks, and it would be easy to tell if the content is altered as the notary hashes would be stored on the blockchain so the Delegates can't alter them.

Quote
Factom
(NotaryChains is now maintained under the FactomProject)

Overview

Factom creates a Protocol Stack for Bitcoin 2.0 applications. Factom constructs a simple, standard, effective, and secure foundation for Bitcoin 2.0 style applications. Bitcoin provides a "ledger of record" where hashes for a Factom server can provide proof of record for its own record of entries. At the most basic level, Factom provides "Proof of Exisence." Any digital artifact can be reduced to a signature that proves its existence at a point in time.

Factom extends this idea. Each Factom subsystem in the group provides a "Proof of Process." Proof of each step in a process can be entered into a "Factom chain" of provable events. One obvious sort of Factom chain is a log. A security camera can log a stream of signatures, proving video was taken at a point in time, and that the video has not be altered. A Coin is also a process, one proving that coins existed and were exchanged. The the steps in processing a title for Real Estate is a process, and one where the documentation can prove decisive in court.

Factom chains are constructed from entries crafted to support a wide range of applications. An entry can be used to prove data existed at a point in time. And other Factom chains and demonstrate their reaction to such data. In other words, a Factom chain is a sequence of entries that define some progression of state, and the data that drove that progression. Each Factom chain has its own rules, and entries in these chains are constrained by those rules.

The architecture for Factom allows for the easy construction of tokens or coins, securities, smart contracts, etc.

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Using Bitcoin to prove the existence of a document (really any digital asset, like a tweet, a web page, a spreadsheet, a security video, a photo, etc.) is a concept that is well known.

from: https://github.com/NotaryChains/NotaryChainDocs/blob/master/whitepaper.md

Also another service:

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What can I get notarized?
Anything and everything that we can verify electronically. These include:
Electronic documents, pictures, recordings, source code

You can show that you possessed a specific document, picture or recording at a certain date. You can also acquire an unforgeable code hash certificate that you can distribute with your code.
Web page contents

You can prove that certain information was published on the web, even if it is deleted later. We'll make a copy of the said content for posterity.
Social media content

You can get notarized copies of Tweets, so you'll have documentation even if the owner deletes them later.
Personal credentials

You can get a record of institutional affiliation, e.g. you can demonstrate that you are gainfully employed.
DNS and WHOIS records

You can get a notarized record of the owner of a given DNS record at the time of forensic analysis.

from: http://virtual-notary.org/

Also:
http://www.proofofexistence.com/
https://github.com/bitcoinaustria/bitnotar#readme
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139443.0

Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: xeroc on October 17, 2014, 07:48:22 am
Then all we would need is a way to back up the data... To back up the content maybe the delegates can be used for this purpose, to store the content for the network. Each delegate would store a full copy of all content submitted. Like a read only FTP server.. create a user with read only access and only delegates have the ability to add submitted content. If any delegate alters or removes the content they can be voted out. Having 101 delegates mitigates those risks, and it would be easy to tell if the content is altered as the notary hashes would be stored on the blockchain so the Delegates can't alter them.
Now someone wants to sign his CP albums and let the delegates store them ..
at least in my jurisdiction the delegates can be sued then

why even store a copy of it .. if you want to proof/verify .. you should have a 'copy' of it already!
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: CoinHoarder on October 17, 2014, 07:53:39 am
Then all we would need is a way to back up the data... To back up the content maybe the delegates can be used for this purpose, to store the content for the network. Each delegate would store a full copy of all content submitted. Like a read only FTP server.. create a user with read only access and only delegates have the ability to add submitted content. If any delegate alters or removes the content they can be voted out. Having 101 delegates mitigates those risks, and it would be easy to tell if the content is altered as the notary hashes would be stored on the blockchain so the Delegates can't alter them.
Now someone wants to sign his CP albums and let the delegates store them ..
at least in my jurisdiction the delegates can be sued then

why even store a copy of it .. if you want to proof/verify .. you should have a 'copy' of it already!

Good point, but I was thinking the content cannot be derived from the hash, and that the content can only be verified as unaltered or time stamped from the hash with an existing copy of the content. What happens when someone submits content then deletes it?

Or is my understanding of how it works wrong?

EDIT: Ok it seems my understanding is wrong as the content is stored in the certificate. Here is a certificate of bitshares.org which you can verify on http://virtual-notary.org/displaycert/

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lb5t9avqt2bsyhs/virtual-notary-cert-webpage-345821.p12?dl=0

However, how and where will the certificate be stored? And if the contents is stored in the certificate then don't we have the same issue as you stated we'd have with read only FTP access?

Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: gamey on October 17, 2014, 08:15:05 am

You can store a hash of any digital media.  It doesn't mean that it is easy to store a hash of a random webpage and have it work well.  I really have no clue how many webpages have enough dynamic content to screw up the hashes.  I would have to really think more about it.  Most webpages have javascript libraries etc.  You need to figure out how to pull out just the content to hash.  Perhaps that is easy with the right subset of tags. 

Regardless, it still doesn't help with anti-censorship.  You have a more transparent voting system on a blockchain, so it would be like reddit but I'm not sure why it is on a blockchain at that point.  Ahh well, I don't think there is a dev or enough support code for this in the toolkit at the moment.  It is a fun thing to consider.
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: CoinHoarder on October 17, 2014, 08:36:49 am
You can store a hash of any digital media.  It doesn't mean that it is easy to store a hash of a random webpage and have it work well.  I really have no clue how many webpages have enough dynamic content to screw up the hashes.  I would have to really think more about it.  Most webpages have javascript libraries etc.  You need to figure out how to pull out just the content to hash.  Perhaps that is easy with the right subset of tags. 

Regardless, it still doesn't help with anti-censorship.  You have a more transparent voting system on a blockchain, so it would be like reddit but I'm not sure why it is on a blockchain at that point.  Ahh well, I don't think there is a dev or enough support code for this in the toolkit at the moment.  It is a fun thing to consider.

I think this could be easily worked around by creating a necessary format for web site content submission that doesn't have any dynamic content. Anything that isn't submitted in this format can be an invalid submission. If you create a template for content submission then someone could submit the content by editing their content into the required format, or there can be third party services that make it easy to put the content in the required formatting for a fee.

Re: Censorship, CP, etc.

That is a tough one.. since the block chain would make the records permanent. I hadn't thought of this, but perhaps there is some way to do it. Here is a conversation on Maidsafe about such things. I made a thread the other day of using delegates as trusted third parties to perform different roles. I think this is one of those use cases where Delegates can be "guardians" of the content and deem things illegal and thus have them deleted. Users should be able to report inappropriate content so the delegate's only job is judging if that content is indeed illegal. Charge a fee for submission so someone would have to pay for submittal AND they know it will likely be deleted.. that will deter people from doing it in the first place. https://www.maidsafe.org/t/potential-way-to-weed-out-illegal-content/
Title: Re: Associated Press DAC
Post by: xeroc on October 17, 2014, 09:07:37 am
Good point, but I was thinking the content cannot be derived from the hash, and that the content can only be verified as unaltered or time stamped from the hash with an existing copy of the content. What happens when someone submits content then deletes it?
counter question: How to verify the existence of a document if you delete it?

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Or is my understanding of how it works wrong?
don't think so .. what you can do with
http://www.proofofexistence.com/
is, hash a document, use that has as pubkey and send some satoshi to that address!
whenever you have a document, you can verify that it already existed at the time the satoshi was sent there

Quote
EDIT: Ok it seems my understanding is wrong as the content is stored in the certificate. Here is a certificate of bitshares.org which you can verify on http://virtual-notary.org/displaycert/

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lb5t9avqt2bsyhs/virtual-notary-cert-webpage-345821.p12?dl=0

However, how and where will the certificate be stored? And if the contents is stored in the certificate then don't we have the same issue as you stated we'd have with read only FTP access?
No idea how virtual-notary is doing the job .. but from what I understand it's also just a hash of the document .. that they sign with there bitcoin private key and add that signature to the text..