It is useful and convenient, and it won't serve all purposes-- it's good to have, it's just not enough.
That second principle stands entire in a world in which provenance information is separate from DNS. Let's say you publish an HTTP URI identifying an author interesting to me, and I make some assertions using your URI. Then someone consuming my data can "travel through" that URI to find out _something_ more about that author, which is to say, to discover more assertions involving that author (presumably with a subject of that author). So far so good, and that's as far as the second principle takes us. Provenance becomes interesting when my hypothetical patron asks, "Wait, how much can I trust this information about my author? Of what value are these assertions published by Jeff Young to _me_?"
Now, we're no longer in the realm of questions that can be answered by the DNS.
I wouldn't propose that we somehow "outlaw" letting assumptions about provenance rely on DNS, and we couldn't if I was odd enough to demand it. I do propose that we frequently need more than that, and that we should be thinking about how to do it. That doesn't seem too controversial to me. {grin}
---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library
On Jul 10, 2014, at 2:21 PM, "Young,Jeff (OR)" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It depends on how strictly you interpret "provenance" and the need/willingness to carry it's burden. If people are overly concerned about DNS, then what's the point of TimBL's 2nd principle of Linked Data?
>
> 2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names.
>
> This isn't a heavy-weight form of provenance and won't serve all purposes, but it's useful and convenient.
>
> Jeff
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2014 2:04 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Bibframe and Linked Data (Authorities)
>>
>> No, it does not!
>>
>> We need to distinguish carefully between the URI, which is a pure
>> identifier, and the URI-that-happens-to-be-an-URL, which is also a
>> pointer or link. Much of the power of linked data comes precisely from
>> combining those roles, but that needs to be a conscious decision and
>> not a matter of faith. {grin}
>>
>> Let's say that a very small institution publishes a number of URIs like
>> "http://www.littlelibrary.org/authorities/4535". Then Little Library
>> disappears as an organization, and its domain is purchased by someone
>> else. It becomes instantly possible for that someone else to publish
>> anything at all into that namespace and, if we base provenance on the
>> DNS, we have no way to distinguish these groups of identifiers. You
>> might say that VIAF is unlikely to disappear tomorrow, and that's true,
>> but the point is that relying on domain name registrars to manage the
>> provenance information of our metadata would be an accident waiting to
>> happen.
>>
>> ---
>> A. Soroka
>> The University of Virginia Library
>>
>> On Jul 10, 2014, at 1:40 PM, "Smith-Yoshimura,Karen"
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Kevin -
>>>
>>> Re:
>>>> There's been lots of talk about provenance and the like in a global
>> graph of data, but I feel most of those discussions rely on fairly
>> technical mechanisms, the complexity of >which outweigh the simplicity
>> of minting one's own URI. (Also, the provenance statements will need
>> their own URIs!)
>>>
>>> Doesn't http://viaf.org/viaf/54202464 show the provenance is VIAF?
>> What's complex about this?
>>>
>>> Karen S-Y
>>>
>>>
>>>
