URI ref comparison - clarification requested

There appears (to me at least) to be some conflict between the
definition of URI references in RFC 2396bis (sec 4.1) and that in RDF
Concepts [1]. The latter says:

"Two RDF URI references are equal if and only if they compare as
equal, character by character, as Unicode strings.".

I assume the 'ladder' of comparisons in 2396 applies to the URI
references defined there.

Is this a simple naming clash (URIrefs != RDFURIrefs) and/or is this
an issue that should be raised on the RDF lists, or am I missing
something obvious?

It's another question spawned by the dread Atom project (it could do
with a normative definition of char-by-char-comparable URI
serializations), sorry and all that.

Cheers, 
Danny.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-concepts-20040210/#dfn-URI-reference


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