"This is user's URI" for Assertion Quality Extension

SitG Admin sysadmin at shadowsinthegarden.com
Fri Sep 5 20:56:07 UTC 2008


To clarify what I wrote before:
>User: "I want to be known anonymously."
>RP: "I don't like that, use a real URI."
>User: "I don't have to."
>RP: "You don't have to use my site either."
>
>I only see a problem with it if the user thinks they ought to be
>entitled to use whatever services they please while remaining
>anonymous.

There's nothing wrong with remaining anonymous - it's the general 
idea of a user's right to use a service under whatever conditions 
they care to dictate, overriding the service *provider's* right to 
refuse service if they don't find those conditions acceptable. If we, 
as users or fellow service providers, think a RP's case for treating 
anonymous logins in certain ways that differ from other logins, isn't 
acceptable, we can boycott that RP and engage in other "free market" 
activities (such as starting up a competing site that provides the 
same services but with less discrimination). It's also possible to 
avoid putting anything in the specs that could make such things 
easier, but if we follow that route, we'd be trying to engineer human 
values instead of address them as people always have. Looking at 
what's already possible (allied companies whitelisting one another's 
OP's, etcetera), it's plain to me that the specs were written to 
create useful functionality instead of engineer discrimination out of 
the equation. I presume we still have ways to address discrimination 
without making it impossible in the code?

-Shade



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