RE: Block chain is fundamentally and irreversibly changing intellectual property and online privacy
I'm definitely on board with strong technical protections for data. It would be nice if we didn't have to care about IP law, because the technology enforced a more rational design. Architecturally, though, something like Presearch is basically built like a man in the middle attack. It's hard for me to imagine a way to deliver information to an end-user without a browser being able to intercept it (aside from ditching the browser). On the other hand, I guess Brave made a start in the right direction with their zero knowledge proofs and anonymous payments to web sites. Maybe there is a way to accomplish that level of privacy. Something like, "I'm not going to transfer the data to the browser, but if you pay me for it and put up an encrypted tunnel, I'll display it in field <SSN> for 30 seconds." or "I'll let you verify it against a hash." If it can be done, I think you're right, it will involve zero knowledge proofs and also expiring smart contracts.
I keep thinking back to The Local-Global Flip, or, "The Lanier Effect": A Conversation with Jaron Lanier [8.29.11]. He talked about how the capability to copy things on the Internet muddies up the sources of information in a way that you need predatory intermediaries to restore order. Enter the block chain, and that problem is solved, but new ones arise.
Right. However I suppose the issue is that government don't look too kindly on locked boxes that even their agents can't unlock. So the systems can be in opposition. Or in other words, do it yourself! Don't expect the laws to protect your data. This is why I take precautions personally but it's tedious and not for everyone.
I'm sorry, I didn't comment on the matter at hand, the MiTM attacks that seem to be the main information source for Presearch. Maybe that's what the "pre" stands for? Before firewalls 😭 I agree with you, this seems very unethical.
However I did a little digging and I think I know what they're trying to get around. Webmasters seem to want to ban (or nicely ask) search crawlers away from their sites in order to reduce traffic and likely reduce bandwidth costs. It's not a million miles away from the bot debate here, they want to server really human people over bots. Now it is of course in their interests to allow the almighty Google access so forums seem to be dominated by ways to ban all other indie and "foreign" engines.
I think this is what Presearch intend to bypass, content which is behind firewalls. I read their whitepaper and the paragraph you quoted is the only one which touches on this. Given that they are very clear that the project will be community led I doubt very much that no one will raise your interpretation as a red flag, especially considering the types who would be attracted to the project, so I think the concern, while founded, is unlikely to come to pass. Consider also that they will have to come up with an extremely robust way to prevent the leaking of personal information from sites, pages behind account access and even paywalls (if they are respected, again I think this will be debated).
Another note having read the whitepaper. It's more of a business plan than a whitepaper, there are no technical details at all. They kind of touch on the token sale aspect but it's all vision, ecosystem graphs and selling points. The abuse section is just a short passage on their aspirations! So there's not much to go on and judge here. As details emerge it will be interesting what the conversation will be because it's a great idea.
Thanks for the rundown! I will try to make time for the whitepaper this week-end. I really do like the idea of a decentralized search with cryptocurrency payouts to the people who hold the search index and/or answer the queries, and I can definitely see the potential usefulness of collecting search data in the browser for public sites that ban crawlers, so I think you're right, it should be interesting to see it emerge.