{"id":176,"date":"2005-11-28T08:11:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-28T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/netmesh.info\/jernst\/uncategorized\/dave-winer-proposes-to-use-urls-for-digital-identity"},"modified":"2005-11-28T08:11:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-28T16:11:00","slug":"dave-winer-proposes-to-use-urls-for-digital-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/dave-winer-proposes-to-use-urls-for-digital-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Winer proposes to use URLs for digital identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Winer proposes<\/a> to use URLs instead of e-mail addresses to identify the document creator in OPML<\/a> feeds. His proposal is another sign in the rapidly growing consensus to use URLs for digital identity: from LID<\/a>, OpenID<\/a> to YADIS<\/a> and now OPML<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He says:<\/p>\n

\n

When OPML was designed, over five years ago, spam wasn’t the problem that it is today. It made sense then to identify the owner of a document in the most straightforward manner, using an email address…<\/p>\n

In 2005, it’s really hard to recommend that people include valid email addresses in a public document[s]…<\/p>\n

For discussion: A new sub-element of <head><\/tt><\/b><\/p>\n

<ownerId><\/tt> is the address of a web page that contains an HTML form that allows a human reader to communicate with the author of the document via email or other means.<\/p>\n

Example<\/b><\/p>\n

<ownerId>http:\/\/www.opml.org\/profiles\/sendMail?usernum=1<\/ownerId><\/tt><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s great that someone as senior and influential as Dave Winer comes to the same conclusion: URLs are very well suited not only to identify companies (like http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/<\/a><\/code>) and documents (like http:\/\/www.opml.org\/spec<\/a><\/code>) and so forth, but people as well (like myself at http:\/\/netmesh.info\/jernst<\/a><\/code>).<\/p>\n

The consensus for the use of URLs to identify people is emerging as follows:<\/p>\n