Re: [apps-discuss] I-D Action: draft-ietf-appsawg-acct-uri-05.txt

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

> If you want the end user to enter the current date, there is no need: the
> system could provide that.  However, end users are not usually performing an
> account verification.  They're querying for information or sending an email
> or something.

I've been reading this with interest, because I think there's an
interesting use case here.  But...

Yes, the idea is interesting, being able to say, "When I say
acct:[e-mail], I'm talking about the entity who had that
account back in 2007.  If the one who has it now is the same entity,
great.  If not, tell me, and don't do anything else."  It strikes me,
though, that that's a function of the protocol you're giving the URI
to, not one of the URI itself.  As Paul points out, taking this to the
mailto: URI (which would be very useful indeed, to be able to say, "If
this isn't the same user as the one from 2007, don't deliver my email
message!") would mean that something would have to understand what to
do with "mailto:[e-mail]?date=20070410".  At the moment, at
least, nothing does, and there's certainly no way in SMTP to convey
that.

A smart email client might be taught to turn that into
"acct:[e-mail]?date=20070410" and send off a webfinger (or
web-foot, or whatever) query, and then only do the message submission
if it got the go-ahead from that.  But in that case, the date-related
query belongs as part of the web-foot protocol, not as part of the
URI.

If you just want to use the URI as a convenient place to store the
validity date, I don't buy that.

Barry