Re: URI for language identifiers

Patrick Stickler wrote,
> Either you have not understood what I was saying, or you are simply
> wrong (or both ;-)
>
> The denotation of a given URI is that which the owner of that URI
> specifies. Period.

Umm ... likewise ;-)

There's no such thing as "the owner of that URI". Period.

The most you can say is that there's an owner of the DNS name. But for 
complete URIs there's no spec, no registration procedure and no 
possibility of legal redress which would prevent someone choosing to 
associate any meaning whatsoever with an arbitrary URI _without_ 
agreement from the owner of the embedded DNS name.

Of course, the owner of the DNS name can control the effect of public 
network operations on such URIs, because she controls the public name 
to address mapping (which is exactly what ownership of a DNS name 
amounts to) and presumably also controls the network software 
accessible at the resolved address. But this isn't necessarily relevant 
to an RDF application, so not necessarily an obstacle to someone who 
wants to associate a local meaning with the URI for RDF related 
purposes.

Feel free to deplore this status quo ... but you can't change it simply 
by asserting the contrary.

Cheers,


Miles