Hi -

This is an issue which is of great importance to persistent
identifiers on the web, and one which I thought should be brought to
the attention of the c4l community. It affects PURLs, ARKs, and in
general any system that redirects a persistent or permanent URI to
another, temporary URI. I did not, however, realize that there was
active debate about it.

Briefly, from [1]:

  3.4 Do not treat HTTP temporary redirects as permanent redirects.

  The HTTP/1.1 specification [RFC2616] specifies several types of
  redirects. The two most common are designated by the codes 301
  (permanent) and 302 or 307 (temporary):

  * A 301 redirect means that the resource has been moved permanently
    and the original requested URI is out-of-date.

  * A 302 or 307 redirect, on the other hand, means that the resource
    has a temporary URI, and the original URI is still expected to
    work in the future. The user should be able to bookmark, copy, or
    link to the original (persistent) URI or the result of a temporary
    redirect.

  Wrong: User agents usually show the user (in the user interface) the
  URI that is the result of a temporary (302 or 307) redirect, as they
  would do for a permanent (301) redirect.

There is more info at [2]. You can find the email thread at [3].

best,
Erik Hetzner

1. http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/NOTE-cuap-20010206#cp-temp-redir
2. http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/issues/57
3. [log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]