Re: URI registries and schemes

On Dec 13, 2007, at 10:58 AM, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> But, more practically, there's a conceptual difference between
> "the location 52d17'N 0d03'E" and "a web page from <X> about the  
> location
> 52d17'N 0d03'E". There's an accepted way to represent concepts:  
> URNs. To my
> mind, there should be:
>
>    urn:location:wg84:+5217,+00003    (or whatever encoding gets used)
>    urn:location:osgb:TL4652

+N (where N is however many votes I can afford to buy)


In response to the location.org/slurl.com conversation:

No matter what organization is responsible for location.org, it is  
likely that they will not continue to exist forever.  Putting that  
domain into a geoloc URI specification essentially mandates that  
anyone looking for a location do so through location.org, at least  
until browsers are designed so that location.org URLs bypass the http  
pipeline altogether (which is quite a large assumption).  Remember  
when verisign/netsol started redirecting all unregistered domain  
lookups to their own search/advertisement site?  It would be nice to  
avoid enabling another similar situation.

Second, how does one verify the authority of a specification declaring  
location.org (or any other domain) to forever and always have a  
certain meaning?  Even if you verify that the spec author is the  
current owner of location.org there's no way that I know of to prove  
that they will always have the right to determine how that domain is  
used (or bypassed) for eternity.

The urn: or even info: URI options are the most elegant (urn if you  
want resolution, info if not).  Piggy-backing http: in this case is  
the easiest short term approach, but is definitely a kludge.

Thanks,
Sean

Received on Thursday, 13 December 2007 14:42:47 UTC