Local storage of everything. A language for the markup of hypertext documents (no, HTML doesn't do that). A strategy for recording an annotative trail.
If I have a document, you can't annotate it without embedding new code in the document... you can't add a layer of markup on top of, and separate from, it.
The decision to embed markup in documents was horrible in its effects. It gives copyright holders extortive power over criticism, for example. You have to copy a document to mark it up, which didn't need to be the case.
As for annotative trail... imagine being able to lay out a set of pages of paper on a larger white sheet... and then make notes between two things showing how they are logically associated, in context. HTML links are blind, unidirectional, fragile, and can't go to an arbitrary position in a document.
Sorry but the first part you wrote doesn't make much sense. To the best of my understanding, you're just saying that you want diffs to be stored instead of a full copy of a document?
If the whole point is to skirt around broken legislation/executive power not enforcing fair use as it should you've already lost on the fact alone that courts can interpret your layering as infringement; courts around the world have previously rule linking to be infringement as-is. But if you believe that'll actually solve things you could easily build an extension that layers HTML patches on top of another base HTML via XPath "coordinates". Of course I'm sure you've realized that if your base HTML is hosted by a hostile entity, good luck keeping it up to date with their modifications, and that's not limited to HTML as it would be a an issue regardless of whatever system you come up with and expect "the bad guys" to adopt. You either have copies, which means hosting copyrighted material, or you have references, which can go out of date.
> HTML links are blind, unidirectional, fragile, and can't go to an arbitrary position in a document.
Blind/unidirectional is fixed at the client level (e.g. the back button, history, you could do something like what this extension did if you want trees: https://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/09/display-firefox-browsing-h...). It doesn't make the slightest bit of technical sense to track backlinks on every hosted document because the incentives don't align and you'd be wasting a whole lot of space. You could have a separate service store this in a graph much like a web crawler. Don't need to reinvent HTML for that.
Fragile, you fix with copies. You can't force people to host an immutable record forever and yes this is abusable by copyright trolls, again, can't fix the law with tech.
As for linking to an arbitrary direction, you can href to a an ID and that's good enough a lot of the time. If you want any more than that you don't have to re-invent HTML: you just have to extend it with support for XPath targets. And that's something you can easily do with a browser extension all while keeping it fully backwards compatible with the web.
It's not even the tech. The idea is fundamentally untenable.
I imagine the GP desiring something conceptually similar to a transparent plastic sheet where you can put over the original document and annotate it. But the plastic sheet annotation is meaningless unless the original document is freely available.
It's similar to any other kind of criticism. This comment is meaningless without reference to the context in the discussion thread.
> can't fix the law with tech.
I totally agree. The only reason why people might think the idea of "markup on top of, but separate from" copyrighted content is remotely possible is because the law allows fair use to some extent. Otherwise any annotation or criticism would be technically considered a derivative work. I'm often amazed how programmers and tech people in general, supposedly the type of people who would dive deep into pedantic details, so often assume their understanding of the law and the legal system is correct without even so much as a simple "hello world" unit test...
The ability to trace back is way too easy to achieve for bullies (publisher mafia, copyright holders, state agencies with geopolitical interests etc).
Stuff like NNCP might help.
The complete lack of interest in developing a truly anonymous internet is worrying.
Another thing that is sorely missing is the ease of use of the web-of-trust networks. Me and a friend on the other side of the globe meet up physically, exchange keys, then put them in our routers / home servers and suddenly we have access to each other's NAS and local networks, for example.
For now, nobody is working seriously on nothing like that. That's not good at all.
I got nothing to hide yet I dislike the idea of my traffic being analyzed.
VPN is just from point A (me) to point B (VPN node) to point C (actual destination). A lot of ISPs recognize and profile VPN traffic, even if they can't decipher it. So hardly an actual improvement.
Tor + torrent + deliberate traffic pattern/origin obfuscation is likely where it's at but as I said, nobody made a true full solution.
If you want full anonymity performance be damned you can run your VPN over Tor. But I gotta ask, what is the problem with your ISP recognizing that you're using a VPN? Everyone is using VPNs nowadays.
If your concern is that they'd know who you are connecting to, you can use another VPN you trust more than your ISP as a middle-man.
If you trust no-one but your friend, I'd recommend running your own fiber to your friend's house, but people could just see where it leads to, so what you're looking after that is to invent quantum-entangled network cards and pick up your Turing award and possibly Nobel on your way out. If that seems out of reach, I can't see how to solve this with technology.