- From: Chris Beer <chris@e-beer.net.au>
- Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 22:53:10 +1100
- To: chris-beer@grapevine.net.au
- CC: daniel@citizencontact.com, Gannon Dick <gannon_dick@yahoo.com>, "W3C eGov Interest Group (All)" <public-egov-ig@w3.org>
Bah - used wrong account - pls reply to this one :) Apologies in advance if you consider this message spam On 12/17/2010 10:51 PM, Chris Beer wrote: > Hi Daniel > > On 12/15/2010 3:20 AM, daniel@citizencontact.com wrote: >> Chris, >> I think there are some critical missing pieces to what are points >> that you are making. >> >> Policy/Legal Issues: >> Putting aside the technical issues, there are legal and policy >> concerns. Specifically with governments, there are policy questions >> about authority and control of published documents. If a government >> publishes a link that is a redirect to the authentic document, like a >> handle such as the Thomas LOC handles for bills, there are clear >> methods of control by the US Government. If the LOC wants to change >> the redirects of the handles, an authorized entity can. Not so with >> most outsourced short URL systems. More importantly, the authority of >> the domain is outside the governance of the government. As you point >> out, using cute TLDs is a common practice, and for commercial >> entities it is clearly a smart marketing tool for their sites (but >> not for short URL uses)--not the same for governments. > > Absolutely - and you'll note that the Alice Brown examples I gave, > assumed that the primary owner of the domain was the organisation > using the service and that it wasn't third party. > > While I was stirring the pot a litle, and they were just thoughts - > something to generate discussion, I personally do very much see > shorteners as simply a technology - neither good or bad. Utlised the > right way in the right environment, with the right policy and > governance, then their use would constitute a better practice and can > assist in SemWeb, Accessibility, SEO etc. > > It is the third party usage that becomes dangerous, along with > redirect bouncing with "airspace" considerations as outlined in > various articles (happy to dig them up - huffington post and royal > pingdom both have some from memory that are well written) that makes > the Policy and Legals so important for usage. When I say that bit.ly > might be appropriate for a government - yes - for Libya it certainly > would be. And yes if another government opened an account and then > used a custom bit.ly link such as bit.ly/usa to point to usa.gov - > that's simply smart "brand protection" and you'd expect to see the > same gov do it across multiple shortening tools, if only to prevent > hijacks etc. > >> Another policy issue is identity. A URL normally uses the domain to >> identify the authority, but with many short URLs their is no clear >> identity. The destination URL will often have it, but that is a >> secondary >> >> Technical problems with most URL redirects as opposed to cool URIs: >> First, most short URLs that are used seem to not allow any changes. >> So if the destination is changed there may be no way to alter the >> redirect. > > Yes - this is a limit imposed by the providers, not the technology. > PURL is a 302 redirect service that does. Common free shorteners > don't. But this has an upside as well - it also prevents hijacking of > the shortcut by hackers to somewhere else if you point it to a > persistant URL to start with (such as an archived document). (ok - so > a hacker might be able to do it - but that's a pretty serious hacker > who can pull it off.) > >> Second, consider to adjacent documents with the similar URLs, like >> http://entity.gov/document/bill-1 and /bill-2. The short URLs will >> likely be uncool, such as http://bit.ly/sdfadea and /w8cs02x . And >> even if the system like at tinyurl.com where there is some control, >> it is used as more than a mnemonic than a well constructed URI >> despite your examples. > > True for an automated system. However the above aren't Cool URI's - > they are just shortened URLs. My argument is that a shortening service > controlled by the organisation, and that allows custom entries, will > produce Cool URI's, especially if there is solid governance around URI > naming conventions and IA. > >> Also, there are often short URLs for each time a document is >> mentioned, allowing for multiple redirect URLs for the same >> document--a veritable nightmare to administer. > > See above. One would assume that these cases (bit.ly is a prime > example of it) are automated, and that you simply can't administer > them. And that they are external pointers to an organisations > information. So for the purposes of administration, one could also > argue that if the content ever changed location, that the responsible > host of the content would put a proper 300 series redirect error in > place with a pointer to the new location. > >> >> I think that governments should concentrate on having well >> constructed URLs and offering templates or other method for >> predicting and/or discovering resources. Short URLs create multiple >> and extremely difficult to catalog URLs and almost useless for >> metadata purposes. Which is not to say that URLs should be as short >> as is possible, they should. The limitation of 140/160 characters for >> a message should be for the human readable portion, not a constraint >> that hinders the good use of the URI/domain system. >> > > Common frameworks and templates? You are preaching to the choir at my > end :) - Standards are good :) > > I would have to say though that again - don't confuse a short URI with > an automatically shortened URI. And judge the final product rather > than the service itself. A great semweb effort for a canny developer > would be to make a shortener that provides semantically cool URI's > based on the page title. (Hmm. Adding that one to my to-do list > actually...) > > A well constructed URI/URL, with the assistance of other techs such as > RDF, RDFa, ARIA, DC Metadata etc is obviously a better practice that > should always be promoted. > > It's good that we're all talking about this. We should cobble a Note > together about it... (Question 1: With regard my opening comment above > - what would this better practice look like. Looking at the UK and US > efforts as case studies - what can we learn - as these better practice > models?) > > Cheers as aways > > Chris > > >> >> Daniel Bennett >> >> >> >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: "Chris Beer"<chris@e-beer.net.au> >> Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 6:37am >> To: "Gannon Dick"<gannon_dick@yahoo.com> >> Cc: "W3C eGov Interest Group (All)"<public-egov-ig@w3.org> >> Subject: Re: Uncool Gov URI's >> >> Hmmm. An interesting conversation as I come back off holidays (yes - I >> owe people some other replies - Gannon - watch out for one on LDA's in >> Aust. tomorrow sometime :) ). And one that ties in nicely with the >> earlier discussion on URI's and other tech's such as handle.net etc. >> >> To throw some thoughts in the mix: >> >> 1) Technically, the US started all this by opting to take over .com, >> .net, etc instead of using .us - for shame. That instantly broke the >> idea of TLD's being country specific. >> >> 2) Quite a number of smaller countries, or states with small internet >> presences, such as Greenland, Tonga, Libya, Colombia etc allow >> registrars to openly sell second level domains in these TLD's to anyone >> (or to those who cut appropriate deals) - therefore, as a straight up >> business transaction, I don't see how Denmark (.dk) loses out. >> >> 3) On top of this, you have the http://to./ shortening service, run by >> the .to TLD authority themselves - and you thought goo.gl was a problem >> re: IANA Root Zone and 3166-1. On top of this, Tonga doesn't even >> operate a whois registry - it's like the Cayman Islands of the Internet. >> >> 4) To further stir the pop on this discussion, I give you .tv - Tuvalu. >> Now here is a case where A country pretty much sold off/leased the >> rights to it's domain completely - Google is a bit player compared to >> VeriSign in this case. In short - there are examples of atleast 50 TLD's >> which are used as vanity URI's by commercial interests, or sold by >> registrars for this reason. >> >> Ok - so where am I going with all this. >> >> *EVERY* URI (or old school URL) is a redirect - they all ultimately >> resolve to an IP address. Even handle.net permanent URI's. Which makes >> the UK and US approach to thier archiving and permanence as discussed by >> Anne and David in another thread very valid - there really isn't a one >> size fits all approach to redirects and Cool URI's - its horses for >> courses and even bit.ly can work for some governments after appropriate >> scoping. Sure we might debate whether go.us.gov is better than gov.us as >> a shortener - end of the day we'll trust and use either knowing it is a >> government service, without complaint. >> >> The thing about a Cool URI isn't that it's permanent - after all - >> permanence is an illusion - companies can go bust, countries can cease >> to exist, IP addresses can simply go down. And it isn't it's semantic - >> no where in any of the key Cool URI documents does it say that >> example.com has to be semantic - in fact, Internationalized TLD's forces >> a rethink of the semantics of the actual second level domain. The >> semantics come AFTER the TLD. It's all the bits after the first /. >> >> In that sense goo.gl/person/alice_brown is a perfectly valid Cool URI - >> it has trust (I know it is reputable), it has provenence (I know it's >> pretty reliable in terms of what it returns), and it makes for a perfect >> permanent search query (google me everything about people called Alice >> Brown.) And way easier to remember than >> http://www.google.com/search?q=alice+brown >> >> I'd expect that imdb.tv/person/alice_brown will return me an article on >> Alice Brown, the actress. Or that t.co/person/alice_brown will take me >> to the twitter account of Alice Brown. And that >> w3.org/person/alice_brown will take me to the home page of Alice Brown >> who works at the W3. >> >> The domain gives context in a perfect Cool URI world, and assists in >> determining uniqueness - it certainly, in reality, in the now, has >> nothing to do with actual countries, no matter how much we want it to. >> If it does, it can only really be seen as a pleasant coincidence. >> >> Thoughts and flames always appreciated. >> >> Cheers >> >> Chris >> >> On 12/14/2010 5:45 AM, Gannon Dick wrote: >>> A recent contest involving Google's Chrome OS featured a contest >>> which involved recognition of the "Google URL Shortener" at >>> http://goo.gl/ >>> >>> The "only" problems are that this convention conflicts with both the >>> IANA Root Zone [1] and ISO 3166-1 [2]. >>> >>> This highlights the problem of "hand offs" between Central >>> Governments and Local Governments. In this case, the Kingdom of >>> Denmark (an EU Member), has lost a measure of control of a >>> subdivision (Greenland) in Cyberspace. >>> >>> --Gannon >>> >>> [1] http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/gl.html >>> [2] http://www.iso.org/iso/iso-3166-1_decoding_table >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> >> >> >
Received on Friday, 17 December 2010 11:53:37 UTC