Re: Globalizing URIs

> From owner-uri@bunyip.com Fri Aug 18 00:02:57 1995
> Subject: Re: Globalizing URIs
> To: masinter@parc.xerox.com (Larry Masinter)
> Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 22:33:32 +0200 (MET DST)
> Cc: moore@cs.utk.edu, brian@organic.com, sollins@lcs.mit.edu,
>         conklin@info.cren.net, uri@bunyip.com
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Sender: owner-uri@bunyip.com
> 
> >> That is, a user ought to be able to know whether a link is likely to
> >> break before he puts it in his hotlist.
> >
> >I keep on wanting for there to be something the user can do when
> >putting a link in his hotlist to _make_ the reference persistent.
> 
> Larry - Do you mean that it should be the user, and not the author,
> who decides? Kind of the "don't let that go away, I'll need it" button?
> Looks like the only chance you have is to make a copy for
> yourself (or yourself and others). The author (or anybody else)
> may not be ready to pay for keeping the stuff on a server
> for eternity. Also, the author may not want the document
> to exist forever, or to be copied, and may get pretty angry
> at your intentions, probably with quite some justification.

This is one of the problems we ran into. Currently it is up to
the URN naming authority (i.e. the authoritive one) to ensure 
that there is a URI which points either to the original document
of the author, or if the author gives it up, that the URN is
resolved in document stored somewhere. In this case we have
a mark in the URC information that the author-ed document is
no longer there. I.e. that the alternative is a 'mirror' and
not under control of the author. The orgiginal publisher might
not even agree with its contents anymore. (legal guestion, is
the third party still alowed to publish it then :-))

What is severely lacking is some secure system where the various
parties certify what is what. I am now looking into public ketys
and various hash/MD5 tricks to determine what is what.

Another point to note is that the authorative resolver should
not die, or at least gets aliased/forwarded to somewhere else.
This is something we have not tackled; primarily because we
ourselfes naively consider us to be immortal; and we offer long
lasting resolving services to anyone who gives us a URN ad the
URC in aliweb format. 

Dw.

Received on Monday, 21 August 1995 04:52:50 UTC