Identifier recycling write-up on the wiki

[John Panzer]

Chris Drake wrote:
> Hi Josh,
>
> You've got 6 points under the "use cases", but it's really just 1 use
> case, and then 5 consequences recycling.
>
> Is there room on your Wiki for opposition?  It's only going to take
> one screwup and an angry victim someplace and the whole recycling
> issue could bankrupt someone in the prevailing "identity theft"
> lawsuit.
>
> Why would any responsible Identity provider want to give a past
> identity to a new person, and why would we want to encourage this
> misbehavior by supporting it ?
>
>   
Two easy answers:
1. Namespace exhaustion.  AOL, Yahoo, others have this issue today.  All 
the good short identifiers are taken and people want them; some of them 
have been 'dead' for years; market forces are important here.
2. WIPO + domain name disputes =  they may not have a choice.  This is 
really a global version of #1.

John Panzer