hand-id.org · New Sections ① ID Anatomy & Architecture ② Interoperability & The Rosetta Stone ③ FAQ — Questions & Answers
How HAND IDs Work

The anatomy of a
HAND ID.

A HAND ID is a DOI® (Digital Object Identifier) — a persistent, globally resolvable handle built on the same internet infrastructure as TCP/IP, designed by the same minds. Every HAND ID follows an open, ISO-governed structure that any authorized system in the world can resolve.

Example HAND ID — Legal Person (Type 01)
10.23
DOI Foundation prefix · All HAND IDs share this
 / B77C-A6A1-D3E8-1E13-D6C7
Unique suffix · Opaque · Assigned by HAND registry
Example HAND ID — Digital Replica (Type 02)
10.23 / F72B-0103-B361-05F9-3Z71 → Linked to B77C-A6A1… (Type 01)
Part 01
DOI Prefix
10.23
All HAND IDs begin with 10.23 — the DOI Foundation prefix assigned to HAND as one of only 12 authorized Registration Agencies in the world. The "10." is the top-level DOI namespace; ".23" is HAND's unique naming authority within it.
Part 02
Unique Suffix
B77C-A6A1-D3E8-1E13-D6C7
A globally unique alphanumeric string assigned by the HAND registry upon registration. Intentionally opaque — it encodes no biographical information, no employer, no platform. It belongs to the record of notability, not to any organization that registers it.
Part 03
Object Type Link
→ Linked to Type 01 ID
Digital Replica (Type 02) and Fictional Character (Type 03) IDs are structurally linked to their Legal Person (Type 01) source ID. This parent-child relationship is encoded in the registry metadata — enabling chain-of-consent tracking for AI-generated likenesses.
Three registered object types — the full talent lifecycle
TYPE 01
🧑
Legal & Natural Persons
10.23/B77C-A6A1-D3E8-1E13-D6C7
Athletes, actors, directors, musicians, creators, and other quantifiably notable public figures. The foundational identity record. Source of truth for all downstream IDs. Citation-Backed Notability™ verified.
TYPE 02
🤖
Connected Digital Replicas
10.23/F72B-0103-B361-05F9-3Z71
Consent-based AI likenesses, synthetic voice models, and virtual avatars. Always structurally linked to their Type 01 Legal Person source ID — enabling chain-of-consent tracking and licensed use verification.
TYPE 03
🎭
Fictional Characters
10.23/5F45-8D85-5C84-E4AD
IP-protected fictional characters from film, television, gaming, and publishing. Enables character-level rights tracking, licensing automation, and disambiguation across reboots, remakes, and digital continuations.
How a HAND ID resolves — the global handle system
🏢
Registrant submits
Studio / Guild /
Rep / Platform
→
🔍
HAND verifies
Citation-Backed
Notability™ check
→
⬡
HAND ID issued
10.23/[unique suffix]
Stored in registry
→
🌐
DOI / Handle System
Global root servers
DONA Foundation
→
✅
Any system resolves
Anywhere · Forever ·
No single point of failure
🛰
The same infrastructure as the internet itself. The Handle System — the resolution layer beneath every HAND ID — was developed by Dr. Robert E. Kahn at CNRI with original DARPA funding (1992–1996). Dr. Kahn co-invented TCP/IP with Vint Cerf — the foundational protocol of the entire internet — and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, the highest civilian honor in the United States. The DOI Foundation has operated on this infrastructure since 1997, now handling over 3 billion resolutions per month globally as AI agents resolve identifiers at machine scale. HAND IDs are built on the most time-tested persistent identifier infrastructure in existence. That is not a credential. That is a fact about the nature of the world.
Independent Validation — A Verdict From Inside the Room

Paul Jessop — former CTO of both IFPI and the RIAA, current Executive Director of the US ISRC Agency, co-author of ISNI (ISO 27729), former Technology Adviser to the DOI Foundation, and one of the architects of DDEX — was among the first people Will Kreth brought into the conversation about what would become HAND.

In October 2023, after years of watching the infrastructure take shape, Jessop published A Manifesto for Creator Identification and Protection — a nine-point bill of rights, written under his own name and his own consulting firm, calling for exactly the infrastructure HAND had already built. He didn't discover HAND and endorse it. He was there from the beginning, and then he said it publicly.

Jessop brings the same institutional lineage to HAND that Raymond Drewry brings through EIDR — the people who built the identifier standards the industry already depends on, choosing to extend that work into talent identity. That is not coincidence. That is pattern recognition.

Read the Manifesto ↗
Paul Jessop · County Analytics Ltd · Cambridge Engineering/Computer Science · Oxford Management · Chartered Engineer, Fellow IET · HAND Advisor
Interoperability

The Rosetta Stone
of talent identity.

Every organization in the Cultural Industries has its own internal talent database. Studios have theirs. Leagues have theirs. Platforms have theirs. None of them speak the same language — until now. HAND ID is the common language everyone's system already understands.

Why can't I just use our existing internal talent database?
You can — for some things. Your internal system works inside your walls. But your production partners, your distribution partners, your union counterparts, your licensing attorneys — none of them use your IDs. Nobody works in a vacuum. Every handoff between organizations introduces a name-matching problem, a deduplication problem, and a data-integrity problem. HAND ID solves all three: one ID, every system, every partner.
Why use an outside entity to manage talent identity?
Because you need a disinterested third party. If talent identity is managed by a studio, talent doesn't trust it. If it's managed by a platform, other platforms won't adopt it. If it's managed by a guild, rights holders resist it. HAND is a nonprofit trade association — not owned by any studio, platform, or guild — governed by an independent board of industry veterans. Like the internet's DNS, HAND works precisely because no single organization controls it.
We have contractual relationships with thousands of performers. How do we connect our records to HAND IDs?
HAND supports bulk catalog mapping — you provide your existing records and HAND identifies which have registered IDs, flags duplicates, and registers new IDs where they don't yet exist. HAND IDs become the connective tissue between your internal records and every external partner's system. Think of it as the Rosetta Stone between your database and everyone else's.
Does a HAND ID imply ownership of the talent?
No. A HAND ID is purely functional — it carries no implication of ownership, employment, or contractual relationship. It identifies the person as a publicly notable individual, not as an asset belonging to any organization. The ID persists regardless of who registers it, who employs the talent, or which organization manages their career. It belongs to the public record of their notability — not to any registrant.
What about our SSN-based internal records? Do we still need those?
Yes, for payroll and tax compliance — SSNs are legally required for those purposes. But SSNs are dangerously overused in the entertainment industry as de facto identity tokens across production, casting, and rights workflows. California's CPRA creates significant liability for organizations that expose or unnecessarily process SSNs. HAND IDs provide a safe, neutral, portable identifier for every workflow that doesn't require tax compliance — eliminating SSN exposure risk without disrupting payroll systems.
Is HAND interoperable with EIDR?
Yes. Both HAND and EIDR are DOI Registration Agencies operating on the same Handle System infrastructure. EIDR identifies content (films, TV shows, episodes, edits). HAND identifies talent (the people who create that content). A production record can carry both an EIDR ID (for the title) and HAND IDs (for the cast and crew) — linking content and talent identity within the same ISO-governed, globally resolvable namespace. They are sibling standards, not competing ones.
Domain Name System (DNS)
How the internet resolves locations
humandigital.tech → 104.21.4.x
DNS translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses. It's neutral infrastructure that every internet-connected system uses — not owned by any website, browser, or ISP. That neutrality is why it works everywhere.
HAND ID / DOI Handle System
How the industry resolves talent identity
10.23/B77C-A6A1-… → [talent record]
HAND IDs work the same way — neutral, nonprofit infrastructure that any authorized system can resolve. Not owned by any studio, platform, or guild. That neutrality is why HAND wins: every organization can adopt it without surrendering control to a competitor.
"Just as the Rosetta Stone unlocked the meaning of hieroglyphics by providing the same content in three languages — HAND ID is the Rosetta Stone of talent identity. It provides the same authoritative record of a person's notability in a form that every system, every partner, and every jurisdiction can read."
Will Kreth · Founder & CEO, Human & Digital · Former Executive Director, EIDR · Co-inventor of the Rosetta Stone metaphor for DOI-based media identifiers
Capability Internal DB HAND ID
Works across org boundaries
✗ No
✓ Yes
Globally resolvable
✗ No
✓ Yes
Persistent (no expiry)
~ Sometimes
✓ Always
No ownership implication
✗ No
✓ Yes
Neutral third-party governed
✗ No
✓ Yes
Covers Digital Replicas / AI
✗ No
✓ Yes
ISO 26324:2025 aligned
✗ No
✓ Yes
Interoperable with EIDR
✗ No
✓ Yes
Eliminates SSN exposure risk
✗ No
✓ Yes
API automatable
~ Internal only
✓ Universal
Neutral by Design
Governed by no one. Trusted by everyone.
HAND is a Delaware nonprofit trade association applying for 501(c)(6) status — not owned by any studio, platform, streaming service, or guild. This structural neutrality is the feature. Talent trusts it because no employer controls it. Guilds trust it because no platform built it. Platforms trust it because no competitor owns it. HAND is infrastructure. Infrastructure works when everyone can rely on it equally.
Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you wanted
to know about HAND IDs.

Clear answers to the questions rights holders, guilds, talent representatives, and developers ask most. If your question isn't here, we want to hear it.

QWhat exactly is a HAND ID?
A HAND ID is a persistent, globally resolvable Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for a notable public figure — an athlete, actor, musician, director, creator, or other quantifiably notable person in the Cultural Industries. It is issued by HAND — one of only 12 authorized DOI Registration Agencies in the world — under the governance of the DOI Foundation and ISO 26324:2025.
QWhat makes someone eligible for a HAND ID?
Eligibility is determined by Citation-Backed Notability™ — HAND's proprietary methodology for verifying genuine, enduring significance through independent, verifiable citations from reputable sources. No self-reported credentials, no follower counts, no gamed metrics. A multiplicity of citations from a community of reputable sources — with no single arbiter and no single point of failure.
QDoes a HAND ID expire?
No. A HAND ID is permanent. It is issued once and remains resolvable forever — through career changes, platform migrations, organizational changes, and even after death. The DOI Foundation's infrastructure, in operation since 1997 with over 1 billion resolutions per day, guarantees this persistence at the technical and organizational level.
QWho owns a HAND ID once it is issued?
Nobody "owns" a HAND ID in the traditional sense. A HAND ID belongs to the public record of a person's notability — not to the studio that employs them, the platform that hosts them, or the representative who registers them. It is purely functional, carrying no implication of ownership or contractual relationship. It persists regardless of any change in who manages the talent's career.
QIs HAND an ISO standard?
HAND is not itself an ISO standard, but it is a Registration Agency of the DOI Foundation — the governance body for ISO 26324:2025. All HAND IDs are issued under this ISO standard, which governs syntax, persistence, and resolution infrastructure. ISO 26324:2025 ↗
QHow does HAND relate to EIDR?
EIDR and HAND are sibling DOI Registration Agencies — both authorized by the DOI Foundation, both operating on the same Handle System infrastructure. EIDR identifies content (films, TV shows, edits). HAND identifies talent (the people who create that content). A production record can carry both. They are complementary, not competing — HAND's success deepens the value of EIDR, and vice versa. That alignment is structural, not incidental: Raymond Drewry, Co-Founder of EIDR and Principal Scientist at MovieLabs, sits on HAND's board.
QDoes HAND track talent rights or ownership?
No. HAND is a registry, not a rights management system. The metadata associated with a HAND ID is functional in nature — sufficient to identify and disambiguate a person, nothing more. HAND does not collect commercially sensitive rights data, contract terms, compensation, or ownership information. Think of it as the identifier that your rights management system references — not a replacement for it.
QWhat about Digital Replicas and AI likenesses?
HAND issues Type 02: Connected Digital Replica IDs that are structurally linked to their Type 01 Legal Person source ID. This parent-child relationship in the registry metadata creates an auditable chain of consent — enabling verification that a digital replica was authorized by the underlying talent, critical for compliance with California CPRA, AB 1836, AB 2602, the NO FAKES Act, and emerging AI likeness legislation globally.
QCan anyone search the HAND registry?
Yes. The HAND registry is publicly searchable — anyone can look up a HAND ID or search by name at registry.handidentity.com ↗. Programmatic API access for bulk resolution and supply-chain integration is available to HAND members. Lookup is always free.
QWhat does HAND membership include?
HAND membership provides: unlimited HAND ID resolution via API, bulk catalog mapping support, participation in HAND working groups and standards governance, access to technical documentation and SDKs, free training sessions, and inclusion in the HAND member roster. Membership tiers scale to organization size. Learn about membership →
QHow is HAND governed?
HAND is a Delaware non-stock nonprofit C corporation, currently applying for IRS 501(c)(6) trade association status. It is governed by an independent board of industry veterans — currently chaired by Renard T. Jenkins (Past President, SMPTE), with board members including Raymond Drewry (Co-Founder, EIDR) and Scott Perry (C2PA Conformance Lead, CAWG Co-Chair). No single commercial interest controls the board.
QIs HAND's infrastructure secure if it depends on the DOI Foundation?
Yes — and this is a strength, not a risk. The DOI Foundation mandates that if any Registration Agency ceases operations, its DOI names are "homed" in another RA, ensuring no DOI name is ever lost. The Handle System's global root infrastructure has operated continuously since 1997. HAND adds its own redundant infrastructure — replication servers, secondary sites, and mirrored databases — on top of this already resilient foundation.
🔑
Your HAND ID belongs to your notability — not to any organization.
A HAND ID is issued on the basis of your independently verified, publicly documented significance. No employer, platform, studio, or representative owns your HAND ID. It persists through every career change, platform migration, and business relationship. Whoever you work with next — your ID is already there waiting.
DOI®, DOI.ORG®, and short DOI® are trademarks of the International DOI Foundation. ← hand-id.org