i-Names Pick Up Steam

There's been coverage in LJ on the whole "Identity Commons idea. Basically, it's a domain registrar for your unique name - with them on sale already. ASN has published a whitepaper on the topic as well.

Comments

25$ for 50 years ?

[mirko]

But what's the point ? Being identifiable under a name which would look like this ?

Valid I-Name formats

I-names are designed to be as simple and human-friendly as possible. Global personal i-names start with an "=" sign followed by a string of characters (no spaces.) You can use letters, digits, dots ("."), and dashes ("-"), but you can't start or end with punctuation. I-names are not case-sensitive, i.e., "a" and "A" are equivalent.

See these special instructions about internationalized (Unicode) i-names.

Examples:

• =Mary
• =Jones
• =Mary.Jones
• =Mary.W.Jones
• =Mary.Wellington.Jones
• =Mary.Martha.Wellington.Jones
• =Mary.Jones.Phd
• =Mary.Jones-Smith
• =Mary.Jones.2000
• =Pickles
• =Pickle.Sandwich
• =Foo-Foo

Note that although dots are not required (i.e., you could register "=MarySmith"), the standard practice will be to separate real names with dots, just as it has become with email addresses.

For further information on i-names please visit XDI.ORG or the OASIS XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) home page.

Re:How Come?

[Spoing]

1. How come when Microsoft tried to do this with passport everyone thought it was evil. But now, because it's not Microsoft, there will be a lot of people saying this is good. The reason why this stuff bothers me is because I don't want to trust anyone to control all my signing on to every site. Because no matter how secure it is, if someone breaks the security, they now have access to everything. At least I know now, that if someone breaks (guesses) one of my passwords, then they've only broken one of them, and not all of them.

The motivations for each group are entirely different. Go and listen to Owen Davis' speach here.

misconceptions: not centralized nor passport

[Broadcatch]

One of the primary misconceptions about i-names is that they're centralized. They're not.

Another is that 2idi is just another passport controlling your information. It isn't.

It's clear that Identity Commons and 2idi have to work on their messaging...

Not Passport (words from 2idi)

[Broadcatch]

People often ask: what is the difference between your technology and Microsoft Passport?

As I like to say, the only thing good about Passport is at least you know their database won't get bought by Microsoft (because they already own it!).

In functionality - such as automatic data sharing, form filling and single sign-on - we share much with Microsoft Passport. (In fact, Passport grew out of Firefly, which is descended from my 1981 thesis on a personalized newspaper - NewsPeek - at what became soon after the M.I.T. Media Lab. I named the systems "NewsPeek" for two reasons: it provided a "peek at the news," and it was a warning that if centralized control over personal profiles existed, the future depicted in George Orwell's 1984 - where the official language was "NewSpeak" - could come true.)

But all that aside, where we differ is where it gets interesting. For one, we are decentralized. There is no single i-broker or data store that you must use. While it is true that there is only one sanctioned global registry for '=' (personal) and '@' (organizational) names, many other forms of community and peer-to-peer i-name registries can exist. It's also important to note that your data is not necessarily stored in any one place. For ease of use reasons you may choose to use a single i-broker to negotiate access to you data, but each item of your profile could conceivably be stored in a different data hosting service. (Note that current service providers that store information about you are acting as a data hosting service already.)

Another point is that, through our architecture and FOSS (free and open source software) availability of our code, we don't lock you in. Rather, you are free to move around between the i-brokers of your choosing - and even to run an i-broker yourself! We (at 2idi) are committed not only to providing you this choice, but also to providing such a compelling suite of services that i-name holders choose to have their i-names hosted at 2idi.