Alexander Johannesen said:
> Let me put it differently; which URI have the longest chance of
> survival, both in terms of as a resource locator *and* as a subject
> identifier, and which do you trust the most and do you think would
> be most accurate?
>
> 1. http://www.un.org/ (controlled by themselves)
> 2. http://id.oclc.org/org/d8445 (controlled by third-party)
How about a counter-example? Try www.digital.com. Digital Equipment
Corporation used to be very important. You could have used
www.digital.com as a URI in the 90's, but the company went out of
business in 1998. Today that address takes you to a portion of Hewlett
Packard's sales pages. What do we use as a URI for nations and
organizations which don't exist any more? Yes, you might expect the
United Nations to be a fairly stable site, but the USSR is gone, a
number of countries in Europe are gone, hundreds of corporations are
gone, just since the beginning of the web era. What about URI's for
subjects and concepts which don't have an associated organization which
can create a website? For those cases the only possibility is a URI
created by some trusted organization, isn't it?
You seem to be arguing that the best URI is a URI controlled by the
referent party itself. Do you have any suggestions on what should
happen when that party stops being able to control it?
Steve McDonald
steve.mcdonald_at_tufts.edu
Received on Fri Oct 30 2009 - 11:34:36 EDT