LRR progress

[Frank Bennett <biercenator@gmail.com>]

A number of new jurisdictions appeared in the LRR today. Most are just
stubs, added in connection with work to move the MLZ reference manager
to the new LRR IDs.

MLZ carries a controlled list of jurisdictions, based on a JSON file
originally hosted here:

    https://github.com/fbennett/mlz-jurisdictions

The identifiers in that file were not well-conceived. I had casually
followed the URN:LEX draft at section 2.4, which recommends the use of
ISO3166 codes for national jurisdictions - by pulling the whole set of
IDs. What I failed to realize is that the ISO3166 is a _statistical_
classification scheme, and many of the codes apply to entities that
are under the jurisdiction of parent states. Some were even
uninhabited islands ... [**1]

To effect a cleanup of MLZ codes (which are potentially recorded in
user databases scattered around the Internet), it was necessary to set
up a counterpart for each in the new scheme (apart from the, er,
uninhabited islands). This required that some jurisdictions with
lingering colonial territories (Denmark, Finland, France, the
Netherlands) be added, although their proper content is not yet ready.

Small steps. The logic of this should become clear when the revised
MLZ client becomes available, probably in a few weeks.

[**1] URN:LEX controls for this by requiring that IDs be fixed by an
official national authority. That solves one problem, at the cost of
slowing things down considerably, but it potentially opens a thorny
nest of controversy over what constitutes a "national authority" in
disputed territories.


Frank