Re: Should WebIDs denote people or accounts?

Given many services are currently "free" it is arguable, who is providing the service to who. Are you the advertiser - or the customer...??

In ontological syntax, it has been my concern that the lang. Focuses on the needs of a service operator, rather than that of the user.  The difference is that of a provider having "duty of care" over an accounts data; as that data is purported to be the property of the actor who established the account (meaning the end-user); vs. accounts facilitating growth of a platform, where actors are more so orientated towards becoming almost like "hive" members, in a honey farm.

Perhaps poor explanation.  My view is that we shouldn't pick which side, but provide the functionality for both.  Therefore persona is important to me.  As somewhere on that cloud, I'll want a person document, and a bunch of persona documents.
 
My arguments for persona (in jan) are http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rww/2014Jan/0007.html

Sent from my iPad

> On 21 May 2014, at 6:08 am, "henry.story@bblfish.net" <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 20 May 2014, at 21:57, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 05/20/2014 03:45 PM, Seth Russell wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote:
>>>> Alternative Name
>>> 
>>> Ok.  except a Persona name is not an "*Alternative* Name".   If i go on the web as Seth or I choose to go on the web as Patty, "Seth" is not a alternative name for "Patty".   Were that to become true in the linked data world, then i would have been outed by the CyberMonster :(
>> 
>> FWIW, my sense is the problem manifests even without thinking about certs -- it's there as soon as the user says "that's me!" about a WebID, and systems understand that WebID to denote a human being, instead of a persona.
>> 
>> Today my wild idea for the easiest fix would be to make two subclasses of foaf:Person, perhaps named foaf:Persona and foaf:Human.  Then the WebID can still denote a Person, and it's clear that might be a Persona or it might be a Human.  
>> 
>> It's a bit odd, but consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood .  (They use the term "natural person" where I say "human".)   Given this idea that the class Person and the class Human are not the same, maybe a more specific class is needed when talking about instances of Homo Sapiens.  And if we're going to do that change, we can take advantage of it to solve this whole WebID issue.    Convenient, eh?
> 
> yes, or since WebID is defined in terms of foaf:Agent not foaf:Person you could have a subclass of foaf:Agent named foaf:Persona .

Persona = a role or realm of a natural legal entity.

>> 
>> The problem with this solution is that non-lawyers laugh (and often get angry) at the idea of Corporations being People.
> 
> But I don't think they'd have problems with Corporations being Agents ( in the philosophical sense of "that which acts with intention" ),
> or with the notions of Actors, which may be a better term. ( I wonder if actor-network theory, which I know little of, would help here )

The term "actor" seems to be rather clear, in that it refers to a legal entity.  Someone that has the capacity / authority to act.

> 
>> 
>>        -- Sandro
> 
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
>