Re: [Gzz] urn-5 "documents"

[Benja Fallenstein]

Tuomas Lukka wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 01:39:10PM +0200, Benja Fallenstein wrote:
>  
>
> > Re Tuomas' comment in urn5.tex, in the "Potential Problems" section.
> >
> > You say, "Anyone may spoof an id easily. Therefore, you can't really 
> > refer to an id outside of the current context: too easy to substitute 
> > another document for it."
> >
> > IMHO that's the wrong way to think about this. urn-5 ids *never* refer 
> > to specific data, there is no GET-type operation defined on them. 
> >    
>
> Exactly. That's the point that we REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY have
> to drive through. If *I* lost sight of it for a moment, think about
> Joe Random Reader.
>  

Yes, I agree. I think we should make use of the fact that this is not 
specific to us: It is a new way of using URIs, introduced by W3C (I 
think). The two really prominent examples are XML namespace names and 
RDF "terms" (not the correct word, I don't remember the correct one). 
There is even at least one other URN namespace being registered that 
solely exists for this kind of id: the urn:tag: namespace (see 
taguri.org; e.g., 
urn:urn-tag:address@hidden,2002:a-readable-identifier). BTW, there is a 
term for making a new such URI, giving it a meaning: you "mint" it.

Our contribution really is a) that you don't even have to enter a domain 
name or email address to mint identifiers (which comes at the cost of 
non-readability), and b) the *idea* that this can be used in far more 
contexts than most people currently expect, namely that the computer can 
internally assign URIs to a great many objects, instead of the process 
common today in which all URIs are explicitly minted by humans.

- Benja