Re: [urn] Are ISO 3166 country codes stable enough for URN use?

Sean,

Very briefly and having spend far too much time immersed in a
well-known use of 3166 and it implications, two observations:

(1) The "we can, and probably will, reassign a code after five
years" rule have been dead for some years.  You should be
careful about what you treat as an authoritative reference.
Because of (2), I may regret even mentioning that.

(2) The definition of "persistent enough" or "stable enough"
inevitably has to be per-namespace.  One of the earliest
examples in the discussions that led to URNs was "the weather
in..." which can be as stable as location names are as a
reference but whose object is typically entirely unstable.  

This isn't a WG topic.  When the NDN spec is revised, you can
certainly have the discussion in the context of that revision
(assuming they don't simply decide to register something based
on a document published elsewhere which, fwiw, is certainly what
I would be inclined to do if I were in their position).

   john

--On Sunday, February 21, 2016 11:45 AM -0800 Sean Leonard
<dev+ietf@seantek.com> wrote:

> In reviewing the latest draft-ietf-urnbis-ns-reg-transition, I
> noticed the dependency on NBN [RFC3188], which in turn depends
> on ISO 3166.
> 
> An example is <URN:NBN:fi-fe19981001>.
> 
> URNs are supposed to be stable and durable over time...
> 
> but are ISO 3166 country codes stable enough for URN?
> 
> I have not actually read all of the details of ISO 3166. But
> ISO 3166 grapples with an intensely political question: how to
> name countries. I read this PDF:
> http://unstats.un.org/unsd/tradekb/Attachment194.aspx
> 
> And it says that "withdrawn [codes] may not be reused for five
> years". That means that they can be reused in five years. I
> think that violates some URN principles.
> 
> NBN isn't the first time we have seen ISO 3166 country codes
> in URNs. There is the urn:lex proposal (not really sure where
> that is now).
> 
> There are also my proposals for urn:xmlns and urn:rdf. However
> in my proposals, the entire NSS is assigned on a first-come,
> first-served basis: the relationship between two- and
> three-character ISO 3166 country codes being part of the NSS
> is purely a coincidence and therefore reassignment of a
> country code does not affect the durability and immutability
> of the assigned string.
> 
> Sean
> 
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