Re: W3C workshop on payments and the Web?

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>wrote:

>
> > I suspect that a whitelist of services provided by the website
> > hosting the web app may prove practical especially for solutions
> > built around debit and credit cards whether physical or virtual (as
> > in eWallets). It is also possible to imagine trusted third parties
> > that bridge between services, thereby indirectly expanding the
> > coverage of a white list. The concept of a white list is an
> > interesting contribution to the discussion on Web Intents.
>
> Sure, but as I said in the previous e-mail, this problem is a bit harder
> than it seems at first. For example, it requires websites to keep their
> whitelist up-to-date and that's not always practical for all websites.
> There are many ways to go about this, but the place we have to end up is
> something equivalent to or /simpler/ than the current state of the art.
>
> A benefit of distributed whitelists is that the choice of who to trust
> is left to the web app - this is good (and is what we do in PaySwarm).
> However, a down-side is that the website might not update their
> whitelist and lose out on customers.
>
> So, it's not only about the whitelist - but how the whitelist is updated
> and how that impacts the customer's experience. If the whitelist is
> centrally controlled (which might lead to the best customer experience)
> - then listing how systems qualify for being added to the whitelist
> becomes very important as you don't want the larger players raising the
> bar such that the smaller players aren't allowed to compete.


it seems to me that a good way forward is, rather than defining *the*
whitelist, instead define *how* one consults a whitelist, and let
whitelists compete. A working example of this approach is documentation of
interoperable standards for RBL lists for spam mitigation. Although letting
caveat emptor and organic reputation just work itself out also seems like a
winner. The point about established players being opposed to
interoperability is excellent and valid.

-- 
"Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, and it is more than probable
he will go willingly to bed at eight in the evening; and, having had eight
hours sleep, he will rise more willingly at four in the morning following."
-- Benjamin Franklin