During a discussion of
NFTs, Larry Masinter pointed me to his 2012 proposal
The 'tdb' and 'duri' URI schemes, based on dated URIs. The proposal's abstract reads:
This document defines two URI schemes. The first, 'duri' (standing
for "dated URI"), identifies a resource as of a particular time.
This allows explicit reference to the "time of retrieval", similar to
the way in which bibliographic references containing URIs are often
written.
The second scheme, 'tdb' ( standing for "Thing Described By"),
provides a way of minting URIs for anything that can be described, by
the means of identifying a description as of a particular time.
These schemes were posited as "thought experiments", and therefore
this document is designated as Experimental.
As far as I can tell, this proposal went nowhere, but it raises a question that is also raised by NFTs.
What is the point of a link that is unlikely to continue to resolve to the expected content? Below the fold I explore this question.