Re: URI for language identifiers

Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> From: <Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com>
>>The denotation of a given URI is that which the owner of that URI
>>specifies. Period.
> 
> 
> Hmm.  Where does this come from?  Can you provide anything besides your own
> gut feeling for this?

Here are two:

* denotation by authrity is web architecture, according to a number 
of TAG members including the W3C Director. I don't know if the TAG 
will ever issue an actual edict on this; I only know of one member 
who has stated publicly he doesn't buy denotation by authority. It's 
a TAG permathread, see the archives.

* case law, in cases involving deep linking set a precedent. It only 
takes a libel action to go from 'you can't link there' to 'you can't 
say that'.

In particular, I think the first makes the semantic web slightly 
crocked from an engineeering perspective - well and good to for the 
RDF MT to say that all URIs must have one denotation in the graph, 
well and good for some to say URIs are owned threfore their 
denotations are owned thanks to some axiom or other. But there is a 
whole layer of infrastructure to be put into place to assign 
interpretations to URIs before safely merging graphs, if Miles is 
correct.

The second is a potentially nasty aspect of the semantic web we'll 
be faced with before the decade's out. Until the lawyers come 
knocking no doubt we'll ignore this one as a non-technical issue.


> I don't think so.  I think that Mile's comments are exactly correct.  


Miles I belive is technically correct, but needs to take ICANN into 
  account. Domains name are a form of property, sufficiently so you 
can go to court over them.

Bill de hÓra

Received on Wednesday, 2 April 2003 17:27:57 UTC