A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
draft-evain-ebu-urn-03

Internet Draft                                                J-P. Evain
<draft-evain-ebu-urn-03.txt>                              EBU URN Scheme
Category: Informational                                              EBU
Expires August 2008                                    February 13, 2008

              A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for
                 the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
                      <draft-evain-ebu-urn-03.txt>

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Abstract

   This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace for
   the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for naming persistent
   resources defined within EBU technical documentation and Internet 
   resources. Example resources include technical documents and 
   specifications, eXtensible Markup Language(XML) Schemas, 
   classification schemes, XML Document Type Definitions (DTDs), 
   namespaces, style sheets, media assets, and other types of resources 
   produced or managed by the EBU.

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Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. Specification Template ..........................................2
   3. Examples ........................................................6
   4. Namespace Considerations ........................................6
   5. Community Considerations ........................................7
   6. Security Considerations .........................................7
   7. IANA Considerations .............................................8
   8. References ......................................................8
   9. Copyright Notice.................................................9
  10. Intellectual Property...........................................10

1.  Introduction

   The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the largest non-for profit 
   professional association of broadcasters worldwide established 
   since 1950. The Union has more than 70 active members in 55
   countries in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and more 
   than 40 associate members in 25 countries further afield. The
   EBU negotiates broadcasting rights for major sport events, operates 
   the Eurovision and Euroradio networks, organises programme exchanges 
   and co-productions, and provides other operational, and legal 
   support. It provides technical advice to its members and favours the 
   adoption of standardised solutions in broadcast systems from content 
   ingest to end-user delivery. EBU activities cover traditional 
   broadcast and new delivery medias such as the Internet for which a 
   growing number or resources are being developped.

   The EBU would like to assign unique, permanent, location-independent
   names based on URNs for some resources it produces or manages.

   This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.

2.  Specification Template

   Namespace ID:

      "ebu"

   Registration Information:

      Version: 1
      Date: 2007-02-20

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   Declared registrant of the namespace:

      Name:           Jean-Pierre Evain
      Title:          Senior Engineer
      Affiliation:    European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
      Address:        Ancienne Route 17a
                      CH-1218 Geneva
                      SWITZERLAND
      Phone:          +41 22 717 2734
      Email:          evain@ebu.ch

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   Declaration of structure:

      URNs assigned by the EBU will have the following hierarchical
      structure based on the organisational structure of the EBU
      resources:

                      urn:ebu:{category}:{string}

      where "{category}" is a US-ASCII string that conforms to the 
      syntax of the <NID>, and "{string}" is a US-ASCII string that 
      conforms to the syntax of the <NSS> ([RFC2141]).

      The individual URNs will be assigned by the EBU through the 
      development process of EBU resources.

   Relevant ancillary documentation:

      More information on the EBU and relevant technical activities can 
      be found at ([http://www.ebu.ch/metadata]).

   Identifier and namespace uniqueness considerations:

      The EBU understand the vital necessity for uniqueness and will
      establish unique identifiers and namespaces under the authority of
      its metadata expert group under the auspices of the EBU Production 
      Management Committee to prevent re-assignation of existing 
      identifiers and namespaces. 

   Identifier and namespace persistence considerations:

      The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) shall ensure the 
      accessibility and persistence of all resources that are 
      officially assigned URNs by the organization, in particular upon 
      suitable delegation at the level of "{category}"s, and persistence 
      of category assignment.

   Process of identifier and namespace assignment:

      The assignment of identifiers and namespaces is fully controlled 
      and managed by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

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   Process of identifier resolution:

      The owner will develop and maintain "URN catalogues" that map all
      assigned URNs to Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) specifically to
      enable Web-based resolution of named resources.  In the future an
      interactive online resolution system may be developed to automate
      this process.

      The owner will authorize additional resolution services as
      appropriate.

   Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

      The "{category}" is case-insensitive. Thus, the portion of the
      URN:

                   urn:ebu:{category}:

      is case-insensitive for matches up to {category}.  The remainder 
      of the identifier shall be considered case-sensitive; hence, URNs
      are only lexically equivalent if they are also lexically 
      identical in the remaining "{string}" field.

   Conformance with URN Syntax:

      No special considerations.

   Validation mechanism:

      The owner will develop and maintain URN
      catalogues.  The presence of a URN in a catalogue indicates that
      it is valid. Validation shall more particularly be done by a 
      syntax grammar corresponding to each "{category}".

   Scope:

      Global

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3.  Examples

   The following examples are not guaranteed to be real. They are
   presented for pedagogical reasons only.

      urn:ebu:metadata:pmeta_2007
      urn:ebu:metadata-cs:EscortCS_2007

4.  Namespace Considerations

   The EBU develops and maintains metadata schemas and classification 
   schemes, which are made publicly available from 
   http://www.ebu.ch/metadata for integration or cross reference in 
   third party implementations, technical specifications and standards. 
   Reference to the urn:ebu namespace shall be a guarantee of open 
   access and quality. 
   
   Furthermore, the value of well defined namespaces in fully recognised 
   including for versioning purposes, which will be facilitated  through 
   the EBU maintenance of its own namespace dictated by the following 
   rules.  
   
   URN assignment procedures:

      The individual URNs shall be assigned through the process of
      development of EBU resources by the European Broadcasting Union
      (EBU).

   URN resolution/delegation:

      The resolution and delegation shall be determined through the
      process of development of EBU resources by the European 
      Broadcasting Union (EBU).

   Type of resources to be identified:

      Types of resources to be identified include XML schema definition
      files, classification schemes and identification systems.

   Type of services to be supported:

      Types of services supported include controlled term lookup in
      classification schemes, resolution of ids in identification
      systems.

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5.  Community Considerations

   The EBU traditionally addresses the broadcasting community but its 
   resources are made available to all interested parties. 

   Communities involved in offering content over new IP-based delivery 
   medias such as via the Internet and mobile communication networks, or 
   using IP infrastructures and Service Oriented Architectures are 
   welcome to use EBU resources. Metadata and content identifiers, for 
   which the EBU mainly needs the urn:ebu namespace plays a key role in 
   content search and retrieval, end-to-end from content commissoning to
   user delivery.

   Web services, search engines, the semantic web are among the core 
   technologies that the EBU is now exploiting to access users in a 
   multi-media multi-platform connected world.

   Potential beneficiary developing communities include:

       a) Implementers and users of EBU resources.

          Resources that comply with EBU specifications
          (including schemas, instance documents that comply with
          EBU schemas, and the EBU default Classification Schemes) 
          may, by means of the registered namespace, become exposed to 
          the general Internet and gain from the interoperability 
          benefits of the Internet at large.

       b) Implementers of other specifications that incorporate part or 
          all of available EBU resources.

          URNs used to identify EBU resources may be used to enable
          their inclusion in, and enhancement of, other specifications 
          while maintaining, to a certain degree, interoperability with 
          the EBU (see a) above).

       c) Implementers of other semantically related specifications that 
          do not directly incorporate part or all of EBU resources.

          URNs used to identify EBU resources, such as identifiers of 
          terms within default Classification Schemes, may enable 
          interoperation with other semantically determined 
          specifications (including present and future metadata/resource 
          description and ontology specifications) of relevance to EBU 
          implementation communities (see a) and b) above).

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6.  Security Considerations

   The portion of the URN, urn:ebu:{category}:, is case-insensitive for 
   matches up to {category}. 
   
   Otherwise, there are no additional security considerations other than 
   those normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in 
   general.

7.  IANA Considerations

   The IANA has registered formal URN namespace 'ebu', to the EBU within
   the IANA registry of URN NIDs, according to the registration template
   in Section 2.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2141]  Moats, R., "URN Syntax", May 1997.

Authors' Addresses

   Jean-Pierre Evain
   European Broadcasting Union
   Technical Department
   L'ancienne route 17A
   CH-1218 Grand-Saconnex (GE)
   SWITZERLAND
   Tel: +41 22 717 2734
   Fax: +41 22 74 74 734
   Email: evain@ebu.ch

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9. Full Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).

   This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
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   retain all their rights.

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   AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES,
   EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT
   THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY
   IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
   PURPOSE.

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