Denotation of URIs (was: URI for language identifiers)

At 7:49 PM -0500 2003-04-02, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
>However, even
>in this very expansive notion of property there are (still) considerable
>``fair use'' provisions.  Hopefully these provisions will not be so
>weakened that I will be prohibited from making the claim that the
>denotation of http://www.whitehouse.gov/#43 is Tipper Gore's husband.

The only reason anyone might object to that would be if there was 
already a widespread understanding that 
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/#43> denotes "The 43rd President of the 
U.S."

Since the whole point of the SW, at some level, is to communicate, it 
seems reasonable to go with the flow. If there is disagreement about 
what a particular URI denotes, then it's probably a good idea not to 
use it.

My friends and I could use a private interpretation where 
<http://www.apple.com/> denotes Microsoft, but any data created under 
that interpretation would have limited usefulness because we couldn't 
share it with the outside world. Particularly since the another point 
of the SW is to be less ambiguous than natural language.

-- 
Dave Menendez - zednenem@psualum.com - http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/

Received on Friday, 4 April 2003 02:12:43 UTC