"The problem with this approach is that you don't get a mnemonic URN
identifier; you get a digit string. People won't be able to remember or guess
these things, and IANA hasn't yet thought about check digits for the 9-digit
numbers that they will need if every business in the world registered one. So
we have yet another number that functions like a telephone number, without the
very valuable advantage of cascading directories. As designed, URNs are one
giant telephone book with an unbounded list of numbers that might well hit
10**10." (01)
This is not, or should not be a problem: we shouldn't confuse identity and
identifier: a URN provides the latter, presumably unique, in such a way that
you can make an assertion about the identity of the "thing" identified, or - in
more formal FOL terms - assert the identity (in the formal "equals" sense) of
"thing a" and "thing b" [1], because they have the same identifier. (02)
On its own an identifier is no more than a "handle". As a "best practice" you
should *not* put any semantics in a unique identifier if you want to stay out
of trouble, even if some people do, and can, make certain inferences from
parsing the string that "is" the identifier.... BTW, in respect to an earlier
posting, an ISBN does not identify a book, but the edition of a book - hardback
and softcover, different editions, translations, etc all carry different
ISBN's: it is not the identifier of the "work" (as in "opus"). (03)
Peter (04)
[1] With due apologies to Dr Seuss's Thing One and Thing Two... ;-) (05)
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