- From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:31:24 -0400
- To: David Booth <david@dbooth.org>
- Cc: www-tag <www-tag@w3.org>, Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>
David, Your solution though surely assumes that only one agent, the publisher, is doing all this use of these URIs. But that is not the case. One person can publish a web page at a URI, and two independent people can use that URI inconsistently without conferring or knowing each other exist. So no one is in a position to determine whether in this case ambiguity may be a problem. Tim On 2011-10 -19, at 15:47, David Booth wrote: > Regarding > http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2011/09/referential-use.html > > This document provides a very good explanation and example of the harm > that can be caused by the use of conflicting conventions around URI use. > The Creative Commons licensing case is a great example, as the publisher > of http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/78807 (for example) has created an > ambiguity problem for consumers who do not know which convention the > site has used. > > However, the document seems to assume that the solution to this problem > (i.e., the conventions that the W3C should recommend) *must* prevent the > ambiguity problems that are described in section "The Conflict". But I > think what is required from an architectural perspective is not that the > conventions *necessarily* prevent such ambiguity (because we will always > have sites of varying quality), but that the conventions support the > *ability* of publishers to avoid such ambiguity problems if they choose > to do so, and the conventions furthermore encourage publishers to do > so. > > In other words, another potential way forward is to permit both > conventions D2 ("A hashless URI refers to the document at that URI, when > there is one") and S2 ("A hashless URI permitting retrieval refers to > something described by what's retrieved") to be used, but recommend that > S2 be used *only* in cases where the ambiguity that it creates is likely > to be harmful, such as in the Creative Commons licensing case. > > Such guidance also might acknowledge that: (a) it is impossible for the > publisher to foresee all of the downstream uses that could lead to > conflict or ambiguity; and (b) downstream conflict or ambiguity are > impossible to prevent anyway (in the general case), regardless of what > conventions are adopted. > > > -- > David Booth, Ph.D. > http://dbooth.org/ > > Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily > reflect those of his employer. > > >
Received on Wednesday, 19 October 2011 21:31:33 UTC