Re: [urn] URN:DOI namespace registration request

["Martin J. Dürst" <[e-mail]>]

Hello Paul, Dale, others,

On 19/01/2021 02:46, Paul Jessop wrote:
> Hi Dale,
> 
> It is frustrating that someone else's provisional URI registration continues to create confusion. This registration was made without the knowledge of the DOI Foundation and our first reaction was that it was a form of "identifier piracy" - leading to an initial robust request to cease their actions. It seems from what I can see that the players behind it are acting in good faith but with ambitious (over-ambitious?) expectations that they will achieve in-browser resolution of a large range of URI schemes.

The provisional registration was done because identifiers of the form 
doi:... were found in the wild and in order to avoid these three letters 
from being used for something else (as mentioned below).

What I think is important is to do some research on how DOIs are 
currently used in the wild. In a very quick search, I found the 
following two at least:
   IETF RFCs: DOI 10.17487/RFC3986
   ACM Digital Library: DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2594291.2594299

I'm very sure I have seen DOIs in URI form (i.e. doi:...), too.

> I haven’t pressed them to withdraw their registration because the status quo (where they at least had the courtesy put our name on the registration) serves to prevent someone with less scruples from "grabbing" the scheme name and causing even more confusion.

The provisional registration should definitely not be withdrawn. If/when 
there is a better alternative *that works widely*, then it may be a good 
idea to update the registration with a pointer to that alternative.


> To be clear, the intent of The DOI Foundation is to address the technical issues that have been raised here (which are confident we can do) and continue the URN namespace request. We do not intend to turn the URI reservation into an application. If necessary we can be "robust" again with the parties who made the reservation but I didn’t see a clean way to turn it into "please regard the URI scheme name 'doi' as exceptionally reserved (to use a country code term) although there is no intent to register it as a scheme for ISO 26324 DOIs". If there are experts here who can advise on language for that, we would be very glad to receive guidance.
> 
> The preference in our strategy for securing the URN namespace registration comes from some of our user communities who are extremely comfortable with URN - because of experience with NBN and EIDR URN codes.

I think such experience is valuable, but you should also consider wider 
experience and what's out there in the wild in terms of identifiers already.

> I hope that addresses your concerns - and trust you can have another look at this. If there is any other information or background I can provide, please let me know.

I definitely think that it is a bad idea to reject an URN namespace 
request just because there is a provisional registration for an URI. 
It's not clear which one of these approaches will work better 
technically. And 'technically' here actually means in terms of 
deployment, because the are no fundamental technical issues. It would be 
a bad idea for the IETF and the registries to try and make a decision to 
favor one or the other, in particular if such a decision is based on a 
provisional registration done by a third party out of good faith just to 
avoid potential collisions.

Regards,   Martin.


> With best regards,
> 
> Paul Jessop
> Technology Adviser, The DOI Foundation
> 
> 
> 
> Paul Jessop              county analytics ltd
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> 
> On 18/01/2021, 17:12, "Dale R. Worley" <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>      My apologies for not attending to this sooner.
> 
>      I'm afraid I object to this registration as a matter of principle,
>      rather than a matter of details.  The inclusion of the DOI space as part
>      of the URI space should be done through the implementation of the doi
>      URI scheme -- as has already been proposed -- and the details of that
>      should be fixed by the DOI Handbook.
> 
>      Looking at the benefits listed in the proposed registration, they are as
>      easily obtained by use of doi URIs as they are by doi URNs.
> 
>      Given the provisional registration of the doi scheme, it appears that
>      the DOI Foundation intends to establish the details of the scheme.  It
>      would be unwise for us to establish an entirely parallel defintion as a
>      namespace, where for sanity's sake, the two definitions would have to be
>      maintained in exact alignment.
> 
>      Dale
> 
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-- 
Prof. Dr.sc. Martin J. Dürst
Department of Intelligent Information Technology
College of Science and Engineering
Aoyama Gakuin University
Fuchinobe 5-1-10, Chuo-ku, Sagamihara
252-5258 Japan