Coming Soon: Your Limited Liability Persona

[Brad Kenney]

Just read a NY Times story which introduced the L.L.P.: the Limited Liability Persona. According to the story, this proposed persona would be a legally recognized virtual person in which users could ''invest'' the financial or identity resources of their choosing, with the expectation that it would form a proxy for that person's real data in their travels throughout the sometimes insecure world of contemporary e-commerce.

Right now, corporations have many of the same rights as individuals (and are lobbying for more daily) -- if I'm reading this right, this concept would mean that people would get some of the rights of corporations, at least where data protection/ownership/privacy is concerned:

''My L.L.P. would have its own mailing address, its own tax ID number, and that's the information I'd give when I'm online,'' Mr. Neuenschwander said. Other benefits include the ability for ''personas'' to limit their financial exposure in ways that individuals cannot.

At this point, it's just one of many ideas being floated, but in light of ongoing data privacy challenges (and the many identity theft horror stories that abound these days) it's an interesting proposal nonetheless.