RE: "xurl?

[Steve James <sjames@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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From: 	ted@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[SMTP:ted@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 	Sunday, November 12, 1995 5:15 AM
To: 	xanadu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: 	marlene@xxxxxxxxxx; reg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; avatar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; 
sle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 	"xurl?

XANABULLETIN, to the new Xanadu community

- - - - -

One of the policy questions right now is:

At what level should there be a protocol difference for
 transcopyrighted material?



But two of my collaborators, Roger Gregory and Sam Epstein,
 think that transcopyright protocol should be recognizably
 different at the top level, eg

 xu://whatever@xxxxxxxxxx


To put my $0.02 in, This seems reasonable. The nature of transcopyrighted 
material is likely to require special handling on the part of both client 
and server for such functions as electronic signature, quoting of 
transcopyrighted materials through some sort of link,  and appropriate 
billing. Why not let a designation like xu:// be used to denote a 
specialised extension of http?

Since we probably don't want to double the number of MIME types for this 
purpose, especially since the billability or need for authentication is not 
really intrinsic to the type of material, it makes sense to make the 
distinction in the transport layer.

As long as xu:// is the name of an extended http protocol rather than some 
sort of re-invented wheel, the designation will not be a roadblock to 
shareing the advances of http or, for that matter, for http absorbing some 
or all of xu's extensions in later versions.

Hopefully, future Xanadu browser software will be well designed enough to 
be a fully capable http browser as well and will accept either sort of URL. 
In that case, there is also the advantage that legacy materials and 
conventional web servers could include references to transcopyrighted 
materials just by using the appropriate transport designation. Presumably, 
the browser could be configured to remind the user that there may be a 
charge for that link.

Steve J.