Re: ACL

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net>wrote:


> To be precise - realising that you already understand this, but just for
> newcomers - it ensures that you are the referent of the WebID.  Just as
> e-mail verification used so widely since the beginning of the web ensures
> that you are the owner of an e-mail box.
>
>
Lets be even more precise and not introduce epistemological magic: email
verification (together with login, cookies and stuff) ensures that you're a
person capable of accessing mails in that mailbox (or intercept them on the
way). Very similarly webid dereferenciation (together with tls, etc.)
ensures that you're a person capable of controlling what the server to which
the webid points to returns (or have otherwise control to the network of the
authenticating agent to be able to control the result of its attempts to
dereference the WebId).

With WOT features WebId allows to establish the level of confidence that you
own the social identity named by the WebId. Where Social identity is a node
in a Social Network and a Social Network is a network of trust
relationships. If the authenticating agent is not part of the same social
network as the claimer of the identity the level of confidence will
invariably be 0.

Cheers,
Reto