[OpenID] Washingtonpost.com wants identities of readers who post comments

[Jørn Wildt]

I just saw this article -
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9936794-7.html?tag=nefd.only - referenced
from Slashdot. In it, the executive editor of Washington Post’s online
version, argues that “Washingtonpost.com wants identities of readers who
post comments”. Maybe this could be a bussiness case for OpenID and a
lobbyism job for the foundation?

 

If Washington Post required people to use OpenID to sign their comments then
we would have solved the problem partly – at least it won’t be possible to
pretend to be someone else. But it is still not possible to ban a certain
person from the site – you can ban his OpenID but nothing prohibits him from
creating a new OpenID and use that instead.

 

So some kind of trust/collaboration between Washington Post and the OpenID
providers is necessary. Now, assume VISA or American Express decided to
issue OpenIDs to their users (maybe through local banks). Then Washington
Post could decide to trust all OpenIDs of the form <identifier>.visa.com and
in this way make it difficult to obtain a new OpenID when the first one is
banned (it would require you to get a new visa card). Maybe Attribute
Exchange would fit the case even better.

 

There are probably flaws in the above – but it might still be an interesting
place to prove OpenID’s worth?

 

/Jørn Wildt

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