Re: Boeing XRI Use Cases

At Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:12:43 -0700,
"Paul Prescod" <paul@prescod.net> wrote:
> 
> I don't think that your analogy is quite right. The problem is not
> that two different URIs address the same resource. The problem is
> that third-parties are encouraged to make general-purpose software
> that pulls apart *any* URI and infers something about it on the
> basis of whether it matches that pattern or not. That software will
> make the wrong inference if it encounters a legacy URI that just
> happens to match the pattern.
>
> […]

Will this objection hold if third parties do not pull apart any URL,
but only the URLs of organizations that have agreed to be part of ARK?
In other words, if we know that example.org & example.com have agreed
to be a part of ARK, is there a problem with pulling apart
http://ark.example.org/ark:/12345/abcdefg and pointing at
http://ark.example.com/ark:/12345/abcdefg, knowing that example.org,
which no longer exists, was part of the ARK system, and not to pull
apart http://ark.example.net/ark:/12345/abcdeg, a site devoted to
Arkology?

If this does not address the objection, then I am at a loss for a
solution to the problem of:

| objects that last longer than the organizations that provide
| services for them, so when the provider changes it should not affect
| the object's identity. [2]

that: a) provides HTTP URLs which are resolvable now, b) allows for
some simple mechanism to make them resolvable at some point in the
future when the sponsoring organization no longer exists, and c) does
not have a single point of failure (for instance, PURLs).

best,
Erik Hetzner

(Here of course speaking only for myself, and not for the California
Digital Library)

1. http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/ark/

;; Erik Hetzner, California Digital Library
;; gnupg key id: 1024D/01DB07E3