Re: "how do you get people to have and keep key pairs?"

:) it does have certain considerations to factor in though, multiple 
usage of keys (to auth, sign, encrypt), management of certs (the more 
keys you have per personal uri, the higher the cost and harder the 
management), key validity (used from and to, revoked on, do not trust 
after X-compromised-date) and so forth.

Things like that may be hard to find a good balance on, especially when 
once can view webid as utilizing throw away keys, just replace it w/ 
another one, or have 20 at a time, and it has no impact on WebID, but it 
would on WOT (potentially).

Just some areas that may need discussed or considered moving forward, 
less it's deemed orthogonal.

cheers,

nathan

Jeff Sayre wrote:
> I agree. WebIDs will be the key enablers of a Web of Trust (WOT). A real,
> user-centric WOT should not require a central authority. It should enable
> you to decide how much trust you have in the people with whom you
> communicate. All of that is possible via WebIDs
> 
> Jeff
> 
>> I was watching a rather great talk yesterday from the web foundation
>> board [1] ("Sir Tim and Gordon Brown: How Can the Web Accelerate Social
>> and Economic Change?" - highly recommended!) where TimBL briefly touched
>> on accountability and web of trust, and he made an interesting point,
>> that from a technology standpoint the web of trust is of course possible
>> in many different ways, but the biggest hold up is in the domain of
>> sociology, namely "how do you get people to have and keep key pairs?".
>>
>> I've thought about this many times in the past, but perhaps not given it
>> enough weight in terms of the social benefits to the web population
>> before.. WebID is probably the easiest and most effective way to get
>> people to have and keep key pairs, and it appears to me that this could
>> well be WebIDs most endearing and long lived feature.
>>
>> Probably worth some focus time..
>>
>> [1] http://vimeo.com/22106148
>>    * first 10 minutes are in french, the remainder in english.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Nathan
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Monday, 18 April 2011 13:39:17 UTC