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Registry for "info" URI type

2015-07-02 13:38:36
Hi.

In doing a bit of research for the recent discussion of DOIs on
the IETF list, I discovered (again) that:

There is an "info" URI Scheme, listed in the registry at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/uri-schemes.xhtml#uri-schemes-1.
"info" is defined in RFC 4452, which is referenced, as having a
separate registry of public namespaces.  IANA does not maintain
that registry (unlike the registries for assorted parameters and
tokens for some other URI types.

There is no hint on the IANA pages that such a subsidiary
registry exists or where to find it.  It appears to me that
there should.  That is probably a policy matter for IANA and the
community but I urge that it be considered.

The question is particularly important at this point for at
least two and possibly three reasons:

(1) The registry to which RFC 4452 points,
http://info-uri.info/, identifies a five-year-old page that
states that the registry is closed to new registrations and
contains language that can be construed as generally deprecating
the "info" scheme.

(2) The registry itself (link on the above page), contains
registration entries for "info:ark", "info:doi", "info:hdl", and
a rather large number of other identifier systems, several of
which might be appropriate for identification of IETF documents
and other digital resources.

(3) At least part of the explanation given in RFC 4452 about why
an "info" scheme is needed rather than using "urn" scheme
namespace registrations will soon be obsolete given changes that
are in progress in the URNBIS WG.   If NISO (the organization
designated by RFC 4452 as responsible for the registry) and OCLC
(the organization actually managing the registry) are convinced
that the "info:" scheme has outlived its usefulness (as the link
in (1) implies), than either we should be working with them to
deprecate (or at least issue an Applicability Statement about)
RFC 4452 and the scheme and/or should be considering whether it
would be useful to convert some or all of the identifiers into
URN namespaces.

     john

An aside:  As far as I can tell, the "info" scheme and the
namespaces it supports are precisely an example of comment in
RFC 3896 about Uniform Resource Names that are not part of the
"urn:" scheme.  That comment has been the source of a lot of
trouble and confusion; it is not clear to me whether this
concrete example makes things better or worse.
  

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