Determining what a URI identifies

Greetings,

Section 2.5 of the arch doc, point 1 says;

"The authority over a URI determines which resource it identifies."

I believe that what a URI identifies is determined principally by *use*.
The publisher is, of course, the authority on what it *should* identify,
but it's up to them to ensure that they use the tools at their disposal
to clearly communicate that to the world, lest the world think it
identifies something else.  But in practice, I'd say, the world always
has the final say, though with the proviso that the publisher has the
power to change, given sufficient time, what the world believes it
identifies.

For example, I recall TimBL suggesting that
"http://www.w3.org/Consortium" identified the W3C organization, and
indeed a handful[1] of people use it this way.  But the vast majority[2]
use "http://www.w3.org" for that purpose, and no information returned
from a GET on the latter suggests that it isn't, so that isn't likely to
change unless the W3C takes action.

 [1] http://www.google.com/search?q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ew3%2Eorg%2FConsortium
 [2] http://www.google.com/search?q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ew3%2Eorg

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.
http://www.markbaker.ca             http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Saturday, 2 November 2002 21:13:01 UTC