[urn] corporate URN namespaces

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

Hi all,

You might be aware that various corporations have created their own URN 
namespace IDs without registering them. As examples:

URLs for LinkedIn posts are of the form 
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:somelongnumberhere/ 
(presumably they use the standalone URNs somewhere in their system).

Similarly, Amazon uses URLs containing urn:rtn:msg:somethingsomething in 
emails to you about product returns; here is a truncated example:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/f.html?C=2WFAH2342Q3N1&K=3SEUCCRFF9WAS&M=urn:rtn:msg:202401201905199531b363910d4325b9b8a9dd8910p0na

And so on.

So far, I have tried without success to contact people I know at these 
companies about the namespaces they are using. (Naturally, it is not our 
job to chase these people down, but the current situation seems less 
than optimal.)

Under RFC 2141 / RFC 3406 we actively discouraged registration of URN 
namespace IDs by commercial entities, but we dropped "policy" that in 
RFC 8141. As long as a corporation provided documentation of their URN 
structure and followed the registration rules in RFC 8141 (etc.), it 
seems to me that we'd likely approve such registrations.

I'm curious how community participants and expert review team members 
see the matter.

Peter