DOI-backed technical note
Entity vs. Profile: A Witness-Root Custody Criterion for Persistent Digital Entities
Witness-root custody as the custodial criterion for distinguishing persistent digital entities from persistent digital profiles.
Publication state
Zenodo-published v0.1.1 technical note
Summary
Witness-root custody criterion
This technical note defines witness-root custody as the custodial criterion for distinguishing persistent digital entities from persistent digital profiles.
A construction may be classified as an entity only when its witness root is generated and held inside its closed-box boundary under a-side lineage custody. External custody, escrow, registry authority, platform root, or override capability classifies the construction as a profile.
Boundary / non-claims
Maximum claim strength: EVP-C3 — evidence model proposal
- not legal advice
- not certification
- not conformity assessment
- not formal AI Act compliance claim
- not legal personhood claim
- not moral personhood claim
- not deployment-ready claim
- maximum claim strength: EVP-C3 — evidence model proposal
Canonical archive contents
Reviewable package surfaces
ENTITY_VS_PROFILE_WITNESS_ROOT_CUSTODY_v0_1_1.md- canonical Markdown source.ENTITY_VS_PROFILE_WITNESS_ROOT_CUSTODY_v0_1_1_ACADEMIC.pdf- academic PDF rendering.ENTITY_VS_PROFILE_REVIEW_DISPOSITION_v0_1_1.md- supplementary review disposition record.PUBLICATION_RECORD.json,CITATION.cff,.zenodo.json, manifest, license, release notes, and SHA-256 checksum files.
Citation
Suggested citation
Kotov, Ivan. Entity vs. Profile: A Witness-Root Custody Criterion for Persistent Digital Entities. Zenodo, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21204415
Links