One of the problems of a website like Media UK is that it’s hard to really prove that something is what it seems.

As a person, when you register, Media UK insists on an ‘identity-verifiable email address‘. As a quick example: someone registering as “Terry Wogan” is probably going to be Terry if he’s registering at his @bbc.co.uk address, but probably not going to be reliably checked as Terry if he tries using terrywogan175@hotmail.com instead. This proves a moderately reliable way, if not foolproof, of showing that somebody’s claimed identity is the right one. It also proves a right pain. I don’t know of a better way of doing it.

For media organisations, it’s rather more difficult.

Interestingly, Media UK is being used as part of some fraudulent scams - where some organisations claim they’re running a magazine, we dutifully add the magazine to the directory, and they then use Media UK’s entry as proof that they’re a legitimate organisation. Clearly, this makes life rather difficult for Media UK, as well as its users. So, somehow, I need to work on a way of checking that a magazine is really a magazine.

A potential way of doing this is, I discover, the ISSN. The ISSN is a number given to many legitimate magazines, just like an ISBN is given to a book. With an ISSN, you get into the British Library, I guess, as well as get to form a sensible barcode for your product. Unfortunately, most people don’t publish their ISSN; but the ISSN is available from the barcode on the magazine. So, MacUser has an EAN13 barcode of 9770269327071 which results in an ISSN of 0269-3275, which is then findable on Google, and thus fairly verifiable. You might want to try my EAN13 barcode to ISSN script and see if it works for a magazine, or potentially a newspaper, that’s hanging around the house.

Finally, Media UK clearly also has this issue for radio and television. I’m guessing that an Ofcom licence number, and/or their MCPS/PRS licence numbers, are the way of adequately checking whether an organisation is correct. Does that make sense?

Potentially also, a company registration number mightn’t be a bad plan. The Webcheck system from Companies House works at least most of the time, and might be a quick way of checking who is company registration number 451593 I guess…

Thoughts?

Photo: Amaury Henderick. Used under licence.