> > 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. > > Agreed. > > The part I obviously am unable to get caffeinated enough to understand is > what purpose the timestamps serve - A URN is supposed to be uniquely bound to a single resource for all time. however a DNS name is not uniquely bound to an assigning entity for all time. say party A holds example.com at time T1, and party B holds example.com at time T2. if there is a URN scheme based on DNS names without timestamps, then unless A and B explciitly coordinate, there's a chance of a collision between names assigned by A using example.com and names assigned by B using example.com. but if the scheme requires DNS name owners to include a timestamp in a uniform format, then A uses URN:dns:example.com:T1 and B uses URN:dns:example.com:T2 . also if you're trying to resolve those URNs, it helps if there's an easy way to distinguish names assigned by A and those assigned by B. the timestamp doesn't have any significance for the resource itself - it's just a way of disambiguating potentially-conflicting uses of the same domain name.