[OpenID] OpenID business cards?

[SitG Admin]

>identities (similar to the business card concept, but YOU define the card).

This is actually how I've been developing the idea since - as a 
*literal* business card, with the image published on your site but 
the physical pieces of paper handed out in person.

I have privacy-founded objections, however, to going into a printer's 
shop and saying "Here, please print out these cards which clearly 
identify my site and link me, personally, to the order.", so I 
started thinking about what would be possible if *lots* of people 
were using business cards for their sites; what if I went to the 
printer and said "Here, please print out 20 apiece of these 7 sites 
which are my favorite blogs, so I can pass them out to my interested 
friends."?

For the clients who needed PHP security, I'd hand them a link to Cal 
Evans' blog (PHP Security Corner), and *maybe* (just maybe) one of 
those 7 (or however many) images would actually belong to *my* site. 
I wouldn't even need to inform a given recipient of that association; 
I could just hand it out, like any other. Sure, there would be an 
additional expense, growing along with the level of obfuscation 
(false positives on attempts to ID which site was mine) I desired, 
but that expense might balance out (to some unknown (or at least 
unverifiable, extent) over the long run) as *other* people printed 
out my card for their own anonymity and to advertise my site (to, 
interestingly, people in diverse geographical locations), or - if not 
for their own anonymity - simply out of a legitimate desire to 
introduce their friends to said site ;)

With a small number of people printing out cards this way, each would 
be virtually assured of everyone else printing theirs out. (No 
alternatives.) With a large number of people, it would be determined 
largely by popularity, with exceptions where the privacy-intent (or 
those who just didn't favor any site over another) could switch to 
cards that they had never printed before. It seems more difficult to 
be certain of a large number of people printing out cards for a given 
site with the latter, but it also has the potential to be greater 
than the number of people participating than with the former. The 
benefit to privacy would be that, for each *other* person printing 
out the cards for my site, the "crowd" would become larger, 
effectively providing true anonymity - investigators wouldn't even 
know if "I" was printing out my *own* cards!

Of course, the legal issues then become trickier than with the 
original idea, but I see it as an optional privacy layer; each card 
might have, in addition to the URL it was advertising, a link to 
where on that site the current (and previous) versions could be seen, 
in case the new owner of such a physical card might want to verify 
the authenticity of their printout.

-Shade