RE: [projectvrm] Principles, personalities, anonymity and identit y

["Crosbie Fitch" < >]

> From: Johannes Ernst
> 
> So you are saying the reason we need a 3rd party identity 
> provider is that all other approaches are not economically 
> sustainable?

There is a tad of conflation going on.
1) People need a means of identifying themselves
2) There is (potential) profit in providing centralised '3rd party'
identification facilities
3) In the absence of decentralised facilities people will satisfy their need
with a '3rd party identity provider'

It does not actually follow that people need 3rd party identity providers -
despite appearances.

> And the reason it is economically sustainable for that 3rd 
> party, is, presumably, that they can make money by selling 
> (directly or indirectly) information they glean about their customers?

If you provide a facility that you control and you get millions of people
dependent upon it then you can look forward to profit. If you can also
exploit the information you obtain from the facility (information others do
not have), then that is also likely to be profitable.

> Is that the essence of it? That'd be "interesting" to say the 
> least ...

In my book, decentralised/distributed and disintermediated facilities are
interesting (cf BitTorrent). Centralised/intermediary facilities (Google,
Facebook, etc.) are merely lucrative (potentially).