Can data ownership be transferred?

Features
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Hi all, as per the question in the title, could data be transferred between two users over the network, so that only one user ever owns/controls the data?

My idea is this: I wish to make an app that will use user-developed data, and through the use of that app the data should develop value, provided it stays unique. The data would be stored privately, and my app would allow parts/aspects of that data to be communicated to the network publicly (ie for viewing of the resultant data structures), while protecting the data itself from direct access. I anticipate that through the use of this app, this particular data will at some point become valuable (for the purposes of my app), and I want to allow a free market in sales of data from the user who owns that data to another who wishes to purchase it. (Obviously some form of escrow would be used here, SAFEcoin in exchange for data).

Any thoughts?

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Ownership of private data is having the datamap. If you gave the datamap to someone and deleted your copy of it then you have transferred “ownership”

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So do we have one datamap (of all of our private data), or can we have, say, many datamaps for many different sections of data in our data-store?

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Each file has a datamap.

You need the map for 3 specific chunks to be able to unlock one chunk of that file

So “transferring” ownership for individual chunks is not really feasible since you would need to give 3. (one before that one and the one after IIRC)

So you would be better to have separate files for each part you wish to give away “ownership” for

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Ah! That’s nice and easy :smile:

Also, to be able to delete data, it must be structured data, is that correct?

Edit: Also, I am assuming that copying and deletion of the datamap will be accessible through the API. Is this the plan?

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SD data can be deleted

normal storage is not actually deleted. You can forget your datamap and this effectively deletes the data from your perspective, but the chunks live on. If the datamap had been shared with someone then they can still access the file. Certain chunks, if they had been de-duplicated when storing another file (or an exact copy) then the chunks are in that datamap too. de-dep can occur if your file had say 3 or MB of the same data in the same position as another file stored. eg 1st 3+MB is zeros

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Thanks for the info!

The complication I’m going to have I think is trying to guarantee uniqueness of the data. If the original owner could keep a copy of the datamap, then it’s really only making a ‘copy’ of the data (or the datamap, in SAFE’s case). Then the original owner could ‘sell’ it, but then keep their access to the original.

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That is indeed a problem. The original owner could keep a copy on their own computer no matter the technique you set up, even using SD or other exotic method.

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Unless perhaps the app itself has a datastore which logs the transfer, and disallows the use of the original copy. Then the original owner may keep the copy, but it’s useless for the purposes of the app. Perhaps some kind of hashing technique built into the data itself.

Anyway, that gets my brainstorming going. Thanks again for your help

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