- From: Michael Mealling <michael@bailey.dscga.com>
- Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 03:26:03 -0500
- To: Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>
- Cc: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>, "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <dee3@torque.pothole.com>, uri@w3.org, Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>, Michael Mealling <michaelm@netsol.com>, Ted Hardie <hardie@equinix.com>
On Sun, Jan 21, 2001 at 12:21:26AM -0600, Aaron Swartz wrote: > Larry Masinter <masinter@Adobe.COM> wrote: > > That you, Aaron Swartz, do not see the need to use anything > > other than "http://www.iana.org", which has sufficient > > stability for your own purposes, doesn't mean that it will > > meet the needs of everyone else. > > > > I suppose this argument will persist until we resolve > > the W3C/IETF split over the utility of URNs and their > > role in protocol element identification. > > I hate to see this argument pointlessly persist, so I will stop arguing > after this question: > > Why aren't my URLs safe? That is, why do I have to worry about an address at > iana.org suddenly disappearing one day? What needs are not met by this > system? From my standpoint there are two reasons: One of the main reasons is that due to existing case law you don't own your domain-name (the same way you don't own your telephone number). If a court says so a registry is required to remove that domain-name from service and either not give it back out to anyone or sell it to someone (probably a competitor). Reason two: since there is nothing inherent to domain-names or http or anything else, the only way I know I can use your URLs anytime beyond tomorrow afternoon is that you have told me so. That may be fine if I interact with you on a daily basis but if I come across some URI 'in the wild' I have no idea how persistent it may be and if I do act as though it were useable beyond tomrrow afternoon then _I_ am the one making an error in assumptions. Now, if the URI scheme requires that it be persistent then I can start doing some pretty powerful things since I can now make that assumption safely. If the URI I find 'in the wild' is part of that scheme and it doesn't follow those rules then I know that it is an error in the network, not in my making erroneous assumptions.... > I use URLs for a lot of the work I do and I'm curious whether I'm making a > mistake. Probably not for most cases. But if you plan on using a URI 10 or 20 years from now it just might be a problem. Heck, there was a large amount of discussion at the last IETF about creating a new DNS class and changing the rules _completely_ (in a new class you don't have to follow any of the old rules, including delegation models). -MM -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Mealling | Vote Libertarian! | www.rwhois.net/michael Sr. Research Engineer | www.ga.lp.org/gwinnett | ICQ#: 14198821 Network Solutions | www.lp.org | michaelm@netsol.com
Received on Sunday, 21 January 2001 03:36:20 UTC