There also appears to be an interesting ownership question, in that two people seem to have hit upon this scam at the same time. ShareDVI’s hash does not appear to include their Corp Name so they may not actually be able to prove ownership of the Codename; the other player involved is, so far, not revealing their identity or their hash..

“Any human may apply to join BlogNomic (if they are not already playing) by registering at http://blognomic.com via the Register link in the sidebar, and then making a post making clear their wish to be a Hacker. An Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment they become a Hacker. “

I do believe than “name of a Hacker” refers not to the set of all possible names somehow related to a Hacker, but to their Blognomic username.

Moreover, Codenames does not belong to a particular Hacker (as far as we know, 2 Hackers could share a Codename).

To answer your point about colons,

“a Hacker may set up a new Codename by adding it as an NPC in the GNDT, with a unique name of their choosing that is preceded by a colon to denote that it is a Codename.”

‘A unique name’ in question (Codename’s name) is everything after the colon. Therefore, the : character is not a part of a Codename’s name.

(It’s like in the Tool field “4@/” the Defence value is 4.)

Josh, about that, I think that was an Admin violating the rule ‘Ensuring Access’. I will raise another CfJ about that.

I find both of those answers unpersuasive.

Codenames do belong to a single Hacker: ownership is proved via a signature that comes about from a Hash, which must “includes the Hacker’s own Corp Name and no other Corp Names”. This makes it impossible for ownership of a Codename to be split while still being provable.

Belief that “name of a Hacker” only refers to BlogNomic usernames is not a position that is supported by the ruleset, and in the absense of that a clear English reading must be taken to prevail.

The second on Codenames that you quote makes it clear that a Codename is made up of a unique name and a colon; the colon is therefore what makes the unique name a Codename and is not extractable from it without causing it to cease to be a Codename.

Regardless of the other player manipulating the ownership of :Corp Name, your own hash does not prove your ownership of it either, as it does not include your Corp Name.

As an aside, if the other player does not declare ownership of the acocunt in this thread, I intend to remove the Codename altogether: “If a Codename becomes the subject of a Call for Judgement and it is determined that ownership of that Codename cannot be definitively proved, any Hacker may remove that Codename from the GNDT.”

(‘It is determined’ is ambiguous language that needs to be fixed but I’m content to exploit it in this instance.)

To pre-empt somebody from removing and immediately recreating the Codename: I own the Codename “Corp Names”. Its Ident is a Hash of the phrase “Kevan thanks you.”

I would say that use of the word “preceded” in “a unique name of their choosing that is preceded by a colon to denote that it is a Codename” means that the Codename’s name itself does not contain that colon.

Recognising that you have an interest, Kevan, do you not think that Codenames are a form of name for a Hacker?

I don’t think so. Codenames are gamestate entities which can take actions and possess characteristics - including a name of their own.

It’s also possible for a Codename not to correspond to any Hacker if it has no Ident. In fact, at the time “:Corp Names” was created, it didn’t yet have a controlling Hacker, so there is no way that the clause “For Corp Names this defaults to 5” could have been referring to “the name of a Hacker”.

The fact that Codenames have names isn’t in itself evidence that they aren’t themselves names. Still, I don’t think that the Blognomic object called ‘Codename’ can be considered a name.

Kevan’s second point is also well made. Corp Names did not belong to a Hacker in any meaningful sense when it received its 5 Secrets.

CoV to move things along.