I fully agree with Markus, Dave and Rod. I think the only thing that http-based permanent URLs is missing is good communication about the *social contract* associated with them. All LSIDs are giving us is a good marketing for a social contract, technically they offer nothing better than http (but a lot of headaches). If we had a good *brand name*, it would suffice using that brand name in URLs. Like in LSIDs, it would draw the attention of humans (managers, software developers) to the fact that a different contract is expected. It may also help machines to guess about this contract (and machines can easily verify then by pulling the RDF metadata).
Assuming "pgid" for "PermanentGlobalID" is a good brand name (I hope for your suggestions for better ones!!!) we could use:
http://pgid.institution.org/some/collection/1202398 - Or - http://x.institution.org/pgid/something/collection/1202398
(implying a social contract to use either dns or first element of path to aid in recognition of "brand").
If we spend as much effort as on LSIDs in marketing and educating that all of GBIF/TDWG intends to use such a brand-name in a special way (no re-assignment of IDs, keep resolvable as long as possible, provide RDF metadata if technically capable to do so) we would have it.
Gregor
PS Any ideas for build-your-own brand-names for this GUID contract?
OpenID? BioID?---------------------------------------------------------- Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn@bba.de) Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) Königin-Luise-Str. 19 Tel: +49-30-8304-2220 14195 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49-30-8304-2203