> OK... why do we want to datestamp it in case it changes owners, but > it's "good enough" to discard the existence of alternate DNS roots? "alternate DNS roots" aren't part of DNS. if someone wants to propose a URN based on a DNS-like system with its own root zone, they're free to do so and see if they can get support for it. For that matter if someone wants to propose a URN based on some other naming system that doesn't look like DNS they're free to do that also. But trying to make "alternate DNS roots" fit into a DNS URI scheme is like trying to make OIDs or some other naming scheme fit into a DNS URI scheme. We don't need to do that - there's a separate scheme for OIDs. And trying to do so would make DNS URIs far more complex than they need to be - for no real benefit. For instance, how do you assign names to the alternate roots? And what happens if people want to set up their own registries of names for roots and assign separate names to the alternate roots which conflict with other names for those roots? All naming systems start with some context; otherwise they'd be trying to impose a tree structure on the entire universe. restricting DNS URNs to the real DNS is a reasonable design compromise. Keith