ARK IETF draft

This stuff looks awfully familiar. They mention DOI and Handle, but not XRI. I find it a little odd to me that I’ve never heard of ARK before.

The ARK syntax can be summarized,

                    [http://NMAH/]ark:/NAAN/Name[Qualifier]

They even have the concept of a “proxy” HTTP just like ours – see section 2.1

2.1.  The Name Mapping Authority Hostport (NMAH)

   Before the "ark:" label may appear an optional Name Mapping Authority

   Hostport (NMAH) that is a temporary address where ARK service

   requests may be sent.  It consists of "http://" (or any service

   specification valid for a URL) followed by an Internet hostname or

   hostport combination having the same format and semantics as the

   hostport part of a URL.  The most important thing about the NMAH is

   that it is "identity inert" from the point of view of object

   identification.  In other words, ARKs that differ only in the

   optional NMAH part identify the same object.  Thus, for example, the

   following three ARKs are synonyms for just one information object:

                      http://loc.gov/ark:/12025/654xz321

                  http://rutgers.edu/ark:/12025/654xz321

                                     ark:/12025/654xz321

xri message