I am no linux guru but i have the feeling that identd should DIE after it gets used. What happens is that I start irc and inet fires up identd which results in in.identd and 10 other (root-owned) thread-processes. Unfortunately these processes remain alive for ever. I could be wrong but I think they should only last for a few seconds after they start.
identd is multi-threaded, and like all multi-threaded programs, appears to be multiple processes under Linux. It also becomes a daemon and listens for new incoming requests, which is why it never dies.