Re: FPIs

On Sat, 30 Nov 96 19:26:57 EST, lee@sq.com wrote:

>> My point was that you can make your own publisher prefix without
>> getting permission from, or paying an annual fee to, a naming
>> authority.

At the time 9070 was published, I checked with the U.S. ISBN agency and was told
(in writing) that they would support our use of publisher prefixes for
registered owner identifiers, and that there was no fee for the assignment of a
prefix. You do not have to be a publisher to obtain one.

>
>Of course, when you discover that the European division of
>Sun Life's software division has been using SUN:SUNSOFT as an owner
>identifier for several years, you'll wish there had been a registry, and
>all the trademark lawyers in Washington couldn't win you that battle :-)

Exactly! Using "-//SUN::SUNSOFT"  as an unregistered, not guaranteed unique
prefix is perfectly o.k. Where Sun departs from the standard is in trying to
claim that it owns the prefix. Only registered owner prefixes can be owned.

>This is why the ISBN is used.  I'm not sure whether it will be a problem
>in practice that an ISBN isn't very obviously hierarchical, so that FPI
>name servers may each have to know about the entire namespace.  Is there
>any further hierarchy than publisher, private-space?

An ISBN publisher prefix is a two-level hierarchy, region and publisher. I think
there are 10 regions (the first digit).

>
>At any rate I agree with Charles here that you should not try and invent
>your own standard.

And there is no need to. Even if GCA-assigned ISO 9070 prefixes are not yet
available, ISBN prefixes are.
--
Charles F. Goldfarb * Information Management Consulting * +1(408)867-5553
           13075 Paramount Drive * Saratoga CA 95070 * USA
  International Standards Editor * ISO 8879 SGML * ISO/IEC 10744 HyTime
 Prentice-Hall Series Editor * CFG Series on Open Information Management
--

Received on Sunday, 1 December 1996 03:12:10 UTC