A Free Online Birth Certificate
A modest proposal to liberate us all from second-class citizenship online
One of the first things parents want to do when a baby is born is get them a birth certificate. To do that, we need a birth certificate registrar.
Now imagine that those registrars were private companies, operating internationally, and that they could issue birth certificates to any legal "person", as well as to actual human beings. So people could register a birth in any country, but we had to pay one of those company every year to keep the birth certificate valid.
Anyone whose parents couldn't afford to register their birth, or were confused by the dizzying array on registrar options, could end up without a birth certificate. Anyone who couldn't afford to keep up yearly payments to a birth certificate registrar could end up without a valid birth certificate. Anyone without a birth certificate would be a second-class citizen, forced to make our identity a subsidiary of a first-class citizen, whether another human or a legal "person".
Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this. Now that it's all but compulsory to have an email address to access a wide range of essential services - including government services, banking, and internet access - this is pretty much the situation we're in. An email address requires a domain name - the bit that comes after the “@” symbol (like disintermedia.net.nz) - so arguably, a domain name has become the online equivalent of a birth certificate. But thanks to the commercialisation of the Domain Name System (DNS), most people either don't know how to get their own domain name, or can't afford to.
A system of permanent, unique identifiers is a natural monopoly, so providing one is a natural role for a government. In fact, the New Zealand government have already taken a crack at it, which suggests they agree with this. But RealMe comes with a bunch of privacy concerns. If every citizen had a unique, permanent domain name, that could open up a wide range of ways for us they could prove their identity.
Now, imagine the NZ government passed laws creating a new domain space, for example id.nz. In which domain names can only be registered to citizens, one each, using the name on our birth certificate. Imagine that fees for an .id.nz domain only had to be paid the first time it’s registered - like a birth certificate - rather than every year. A name change by deed poll could automatically include the registration of a new id.nz domain, and the sunsetting of the old one after a reasonable transition period.
A wide range of DIY, community-hosted or commercial systems could then be created to supply people with online services using our id.nz domain. For example, former rugby player and mental health advocate John Kirwan could have an email address like me@johnkirwan.id.nz, and a personal homepage at www.johnkirwan.id.nz. His social media account on the fediverse could be @me@johnkirwan.id.nz. His chat address could also be me@johnkirwan.id.nz, (XMPP), or @me:johnkirwan.id.nz (Matrix). Unless her can find someone willing to supply them for free, John would need to cover the costs of hosting these services. But they’d never stop working just because he hadn’t paid annual fees to use his own name with them
Now to be clear, I’m just using my country as an example to make this explanation simpler. Any jurisdiction could do the same thing, as long as it controls its own TLD, like .nz (New Zealand), .nyc (New York City), or .tv (Tuvalu). If every country did this, everyone in the world could have our own online identity, under our own name, without constantly paying for the privilege.
It’s also important to note that I'm proposing this as a supplement to the existing domain system, not a replacement. If people want to pay to register other domain names and communicate pseudonymously, that right must be absolutely protected. If they’re happy to keep using an email address like JoeBloggs@DataFarmingCorporation.com, or publish their thoughts at JoeBloggs.DataFarmingCorporation.com, that’s their choice. But this way - arguably for the first time - it would actually be a free choice.
Imagine that.
Images:
"Birth and Death Certificate Research" by MPLSArchives, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
"Online ID dogtag" by Gideon Burton, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.