Well, not quite, or rather, Ben and Mena have plans for comment authentication options of which TypeKey mimicks the Drupal-network logins ... only Drupal's is open and distributed. But, to their considerable credit, the Trotts offer an open authentication API so, should I want exactly Drupal-spec Jabber-ID in MT, I'm free to create, deploy, and, presumably, distribute it.

This and more in the new TypeKey FAQ, and of the many, many comments on both sides of the fence, I'd say Burning Bird gives us a critical but fair and thorough survey, there's another bloodshot hipshot c'mon people from Mark and a brief wit where distler pretty much sinks the whole centralization ploy by asking such questions as, for example, how banning throw-away user identity patterns is really any better than pattern-banning endless spamsite URLs.

Identity DNS

Nonetheless, this concept of granting more access control to the blog-owner, and that we are discussing solutions at all, this is really very encouraging. Ditto the concept of some sort of reliably accountable online identity, only it need not be clamped tight in a centralism; you found this website, and you're reasonably sure it's the right spot, and the DNS that did this trick is completely open, scalable, reliable, tedious to spoof and pretty hard to monitarily monopolize.

Here I wonder if there is any deep merit in the decentralized and distributed Drupal network identity; in Drupal, once one participating host accepts your login, so will any other node in the network. In addition to being distributed, any useful identity system needs to break free of the monotonic, to allow colour in context, be fluid and accommodating of set and setting, just like it's real-world counterpart. Unlike Passport and other single-login services, in the Drupal scheme, there is no central profile, you are still free to fill out alternate personality data at each secondary location -- only your login/password is traded, so you can have your local identity arbitrarily tailored to the situation. You can be all at once seriously musician at dmusic, a wanton sex goddess at orkut, and devotionally bizgeek at ecademy. No problem.

The Drupal/Jabber scheme also distributes the trust risk. Who you are isn't only dependent on who ever filled out the form -- the point-of-entry Drupal (or Jabber) that first accepts you is the only one that has verified your login, typically by an email challenge, only now, since your login becomes now tagged by the accepting hostname, that server will bear some of the responsibility for your authenticity.
: Sure, in it's present form, anyone could barge in and sign up phoney accounts, or hire a raft of off-shores to do it, but in a more serious skin-in-the-game model it would become incumbent on these hosts to value their own reputation and invest in this value by improving the reliability of these initial credentials.

Take note, under my scheme, we now have the classical genetic-algorithm model behind the evolutionary Internet and OpenSource innovation: A highly motivated and massively parallel competitive search of the problem space.

tell 'em Louis sent ya

By divesting the problem of authentication from the login act we buy the freedom to explore solutions to each side of the transaction independent of the other, and in so doing open a sort of free-market of identity survivalism. To mimick the proposed TypeKey selective-ban policies, any network member site would apply a JayAllen ban-pattern list to the full login name@server, but they might also now ban the specific authenticating server.

It's a completely situational and transactional kind of trust: I trust this person from this server for this purpose, end of story. If some server starts to pollute one network with bad IDs, like a lame nameserver, it gets itself excluded from that gene pool even though it might still be considered reliable and just in some other network context. Over time, servers may emerge as particularly reliable authenticating hosts in a certain microcosm niche, diligent and serious about who they allow for reasons that make sense in their own sphere, and thereby one host may become a prestigious trustworthy blog-world identity to have, another may become known as rogue and reckless, yet, as happens in life, both of these preceded reputations may have very different merit values to different blog-owners.

The point is, though, we'd retain the freedom of that choice.