Keith Moore wrote:
...
If you want an identifer that is stable over the long term, then you
want to avoid burdening the name with any dependencies or associations
with things that aren't stable over a long term -- such as directory
structures, domain names, and access protocols.
I'm sure every argument has been made and remade so I ask only for my
own education:
Why are HTTP URIs unstable over the long term? Why shouldn't the URI
"http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0821.txt"; last for 100 years? All it would
take is sane management and about a thousand dollars in domain name
fees. But more to the point, isn't this the exact same situation with
ISBN numbers? If the "International ISBN Agency" and "US ISBN Agency"
were shut down for lack of funding then who whould arbitrate disputes
about ownership of ISBNs? What if those groups started leaking changed
data through their publications. What if I broke in and scrambled their
database to swap the ISBNs for my book and that of Stephen King's latest
book?
Longevity seems to me to come down to money, willpower, security and
trust, not to one syntax versus the other.
Paul Prescod