Subject: Application for a formal URN NID

From: Enrico Francesconi <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:08:34 +0100

Dear Sirs,
    as per RFC 3406, we are requesting a two-week review for a formal  
URN namespace (LEX) related to "Sources of Law". The I-D application  
for our formal URN NID request is available at:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-spinosa-urn-lex
Since this Internet Draft is going to expire on April 4th, 2013, we  
would kindly ask you if, meanwhile, we have to upload the draft again  
(even if no changes have been made with respect to the current version  
(v.07)).

Thank you very much
best regards
    Pierluigi Spinosa and Enrico Francesconi

---------------------------------------------------------
ITTIG - CNR
Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques
Italian National Research Council

Via de' Barucci 20
50127 Florence
Italy

Tel: +39 055 4399665
Fax: +39 055 4399605
email: [email-masked]
---------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:55:48 +0100

On 27 mar 2013, at 18:08, Enrico Francesconi <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Dear Sirs, 
>    as per RFC 3406, we are requesting a two-week review for a formal URN namespace (LEX) related to "Sources of Law". The 
> I-D application for our formal URN NID request is available at:
> Since this Internet Draft is going to expire on April 4th, 2013, we would kindly ask you if, meanwhile, we have to upload the draft again (even if no changes have been made with respect to the current version (v.07)).

I have a few comments on this namespace, which I in general believe is a Very Good Idea:

1. Non-allocated TLD .LEX

I object to use of the non-allocated TLD .LEX

2. Casing

The text in section 3.3 must be much more clear as there is nothing called case insensitivity globally. Instead it must be clear whether the identifiers are lower case or upper case of whatever base string is chosen, and whether the base string or its case folded equivalent is to be used in the identifier.

More generically, it must be decided what normalisation form strings should be in to be used as tokens in this URN.

3. Use of Unicode codepoints

I do not think the full Unicode codespace should be allowed, even if the codepoints are %-encoded

4. Sub namespaces

Is there an intention to have a registry for for example <authority>?

5. Language tags

I think you should refer to BCP-47 instead of ISO 639-1.

6. Mapping from lex namespace tokens to DNS tokens

What is to be made when/if the lex namespace token include non-ascii?

7. Algorithm for the DNS resolution

In addition to [6], I see there is a mapping from '.' to '-'. Is there some formal syntax to be included?

8. Bidirectionality

There is no mention of potential implications of bidirectional codepoints, and/or the general directionality of the lex identifier itself.

   Patrik

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:57:13 -0700

Greetings,

I note that this document uses ISO3166-1 alpha 2 as the common source
of jurisdiction codes; these codes are subject to re-assignment, if I
understand it correctly, and some have been re-assigned (e.g. AI).
How would the namespace authority handle such a re-assignment?

The document also says this:

   In order to keep editing and communication more simple and to avoid
   character percent-encoding, it is strongly recommended that national
   characters and diacritic signs are turned into base characters (e.g.,
   the Italian term "sanitU+00E0" converted into "sanita", the French
   term "ministU+00E8re" converted into "ministere"). Otherwise, the
   characters have to be percent-encoded according to the UTF-8
   character encoding [STD63] (e.g., "sanitU+00E0" encoded into
   "sanit%C3%A1").
   Anyway each country or jurisdiction decides the uniform names
   encoding modality of all the sources of law issued within its
   territory.

The recommendation to use "base characters" does not work for
languages where the base character set is not permitted according to
the URN syntax.  Within the EU context, Greek would face this problem;
the extension of this system to China, Japan, or Korea would represent
similar challenges.  Having a common method seems essentially required
for successful parsing, but matching will be a challenge even so,
because of the issue that characters which are considered equivalent
in one jurisdiction may not be so in others.  If a straight
string-match on the encoded characters is sufficient, this can be
worked around, but it implies that the namespace authorities will need
strict canonicalization rules.  Is that within the scope of this
effort?

Reading through this, I am greatly concerned that the attempt to
create a system which is applies to each national legal system but is
not obviously delegated to them will result in reference issues.  I am
particularly concerned by the implications for countries with multiple
national languages; if a country which allows multiple languages, the
choice of which to use for sub jurisdictions seems fraught with
political impact.  Making them parallel without the input of the
jurisdiction seems, unfortunately, to create reference integrity
problems.

 An alternative approach is for the relevant national authority to
create a namespace and to use that to include legal documents if they
wish (New Zealand, for example, has created a URN namespace).  Why is
that not the preferable approach here?

best regards,

Ted Hardie

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Enrico Francesconi
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> Dear Sirs,
>    as per RFC 3406, we are requesting a two-week review for a formal URN
> namespace (LEX) related to "Sources of Law". The I-D application for our
> formal URN NID request is available at:
>
> Since this Internet Draft is going to expire on April 4th, 2013, we would
> kindly ask you if, meanwhile, we have to upload the draft again (even if no
> changes have been made with respect to the current version (v.07)).
>
>
> Thank you very much
>
> best regards
>

---

From: Enrico Francesconi <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:11:39 +0100

Dear Sirs,
    thank you very much for your feedback. Before going on with a more  
detailed answer to your suggestions, we would like to ask you if we  
have to upload again the current version, since this Internet Draft is  
going to expire on April 4th, 2013. In fact a new draft including  
changes following your remarks probably will not be uploaded before  
April, 4th.

Thanks a lot
best regards

    Enrico and Pierluigi

Via de' Barucci 20
50127 Florence
Italy

Tel: +39 055 4399665
Fax: +39 055 4399605

On 27/mar/13, at 18:55, Patrik Fältström wrote:

>> URN namespace (LEX) related to "Sources of Law". The
>> would kindly ask you if, meanwhile, we have to upload the draft  
>> again (even if no changes have been made with respect to the  
>> current version (v.07)).
>
> The text in section 3.3 must be much more clear as there is nothing  
> called case insensitivity globally. Instead it must be clear whether  
> the identifiers are lower case or upper case of whatever base string  
> is chosen, and whether the base string or its case folded equivalent  
> is to be used in the identifier.
>
> More generically, it must be decided what normalisation form strings  
> should be in to be used as tokens in this URN.
>
> There is no mention of potential implications of bidirectional  
> codepoints, and/or the general directionality of the lex identifier  
> itself.
>
>   Patrik
>

>> URN
>> would

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2013 09:39:18 -0700

Greetings,

No, you do not have to have a new version before the expiration.  If
you upload a new version after expiration,  things should work.  If
you have trouble, you can email the new version to the secretariat,
and they can post it as an update for you.

regards,

Ted Hardie

On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 4:11 AM, Enrico Francesconi
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> detailed answer to your suggestions, we would like to ask you if we have to
> upload again the current version, since this Internet Draft is going to
> expire on April 4th, 2013. In fact a new draft including changes following
> your remarks probably will not be uploaded before April, 4th.
>
> Thanks a lot
> best regards
>
>    Enrico and Pierluigi
>
>
>
> namespace (LEX) related to "Sources of Law". The
>
> The text in section 3.3 must be much more clear as there is nothing called
> case insensitivity globally. Instead it must be clear whether the
> identifiers are lower case or upper case of whatever base string is chosen,
> and whether the base string or its case folded equivalent is to be used in
> the identifier.
>
> There is no mention of potential implications of bidirectional codepoints,
> and/or the general directionality of the lex identifier itself.
>
>   Patrik
>
>
>
>