Eric disagrees with my comments about why digital ID schemes need to be driven from the bottom up based on the real needs of the market. I’m just not sure he’s disagreeing with what I’m actually saying.

I’m saying that I’m wary of digID schemes driven from the top down because they are not addressing the real needs of the market; those needs are already being addressed in a thousand different ways. Somehow this comes across as elitist in Eric’s re-statement of it. Or maybe he’s just teasing me. Anyway, the substance of Eric’s reply is that, in caps, “IT’S ALREADY HERE.” The Big Boys are already aggregating and blacklisting.

Eric’s been doing us all a service by pointing this out. We should do what we can (i.e., precious little) to fight the Big Boys’ plans. But rushing to support another top-down scheme, albeit one that is far better and far more focused on the rights of the individual, isn’t necessarily the right way to counteract the predatory ID schemes already coming at us. Here are two reasons why not: First, if there’s no market demand for such a system – and there isn’t – it won’t work. Second, even if there were, that wouldn’t stop the anti-market Big Boys from imposing their will on us.

So, I can’t get too het up about supporting a humane digital ID scheme that will bring with it — necessarily, according to Bryan — a DRM scenario that, IMO, is as close to a nightmare as we can dream.

Categories: Uncategorized dw