Subject: Re: [urn] 2141bis questions - (5) Section 6 and valid and invalid URNs

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2015 16:47:36 -0500

--On Thursday, January 22, 2015 08:20 +0200 Juha Hakala
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> On 21.1.2015 19:05, John C Klensin wrote:
>> 
>> --On Monday, January 05, 2015 14:36 +0200 Juha Hakala
>> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> 
>>> There are at least two different cases here. Anyone who knows
>>> anything about usage of standard identifiers would see that
>>> urn:klensin:* URNs are (and probably will be) invalid. But it
>>> is more difficult to work out the status of URNs which look
>>> valid. For instance, even some librarians might think that
>>> urn:isrc:* are OK (ISRC = International Standard Recording
>>> Code, http://isrc.ifpi.org/en/), especially if those URNs are
>>> actionable (they might be). But without formal namespace
>>> registration urn:isrc:*'s are still as invalid as
>>> urn:klensin:* ones, even though it is not likely that NID
>>> "ISRC" will be assigned to some other identifier system than
>>> ISRC.
>> Unless the International Society of Rat Catchers decides to
>> create a namepace to identify their members, species or
>> population information about rats, etc.   That further example
>> is of no interest except as evidence of the really good reason
>> why someone expecting to create and use an ISRC URN had best
>> pay careful and early attention to registration.  I don't
>> think it needs to be reflected in the document although I'd
>> be open to adding a comment if someone else thought it was
>> important and wanted to add text.
> 
> Not all communities using (ISO) standard identifiers will
> register URN namespaces for themselves early on, and it may
> take a while before URN namespace registration becomes a
> standard procedure. There is no way IETF could force for
> instance the ISRC community into registering a namespace, and
> if the International Society of Rat Catchers wish to register
> NID "ISRC" now, there is nothing in rfc2141 or rfc2141bis to
> prevent that, or even inform them that trying to register that
> NID might not be a good idea.
> 
> However, it is easy to reserve NIDs which match acronyms of
> relevant ISO / industry standards to these standards. All it
> takes is a comment to this effect in the RFC. Then the
> International Society of Rat Catchers be required to check in
> advance if the NID ISRC is available using Google or perhaps a
> list of reserved NIDs maintained by  e.g. IANA as an annex to
> the list of registered NIDs. And if the registrant fails to
> make such a check, the expert reviewing the registration
> request should do that, and when necessary ask the registrant
> to change the proposed NID.

Unless those ISO / industry communities are in the habit of
finding RFCs and carefully reading reading them, I don't know
that that a comment in an RFC would help much.  Comments to
relevant SDOs and trade associations might be much more useful.
We've actually got a lot of experience with people checking
whether identifiers are in use using Google, other search
engines, or the perhaps-inevitable Wikipedia pages.  It can be
very useful but, especially if it becomes a normative
requirement it can also lead to various extortion and denial of
service attacks, much as we have seen with some domain names.
So it might be better to design registration procedures to let,
e.g., a recognized standards body register placeholders for NID
strings using some relatively easy process with details being
supplied later _and_ by then trying to make those bodies aware
of the risks of not registering those placeholders.

To the extent to which any of this requires changes to 2141bis,
suggested text and suggestions about where to put it would be
helpful.  See also in that regard my topic (9) on the text
describing expert review.

best,
    john