Article:		Tomorrow's Web Today
Subject:		Trust factor
Date:		2004-06-13 11:07:09
From:		pwainewright
What if the cheapest ticket provider happens to be selling Barry tickets for seats that don't exist? Or for seats that have already been sold to someone else? Even if they do exist, did he check whether they were restricted legroom, or restricted view? Barry has to have enough knowledge of the business of buying theatre tickets to be aware of all these extra nuances. But where does he go to look up this information? How does he know which registries he can trust? In a perfectly ordered, straitforward world, Barry would be able to do the job as described. But life is not like that, and that's why this description remains fanciful.

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• Trust factor
  2004-06-13 14:16:05 Daniel Zambonini [Reply]
  
  Good points, and these are stumbling blocks that the Semantic Web will need to overcome - and I'm sure it will in some respects.

  
  The W3C are putting effort into the Trust issue, which may involve XML Signatures, and perhaps Google-style 'trust through relationships' ranking of organisations (there's some interesting thoughts at http://www.w3.org/2002/03/key-free-trust.html).

  
  This issue is valid even today; even if you buy your tickets first-hand, you may not know if the supplier will deliver. I suppose we trust our judgements through brand recognition; perhaps the agent could be pre-configured with a set of authorised agents (only compare and make purchases from these 20 sites, or those that can provide a valid SSL certificate)?

  
  The leg-room issue is a tricky one; though if the sites used Theatre-Seat Mark-up Language (TSML), the agent wouldn't have a problem...