RFC 7972

Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) URN Namespace Definition

📅 published September 2016, from ietf

RFC 7972: Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) URN Namespace Definition 🎬✨

okay bestie, so this is RFC 7972 💖 It's titled Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) URN Namespace Definition. P. Lemieux of Sandflow Consulting LLC wrote it, and it was published in September 2016 as an Informational document, which means it's published for info and isn't an Internet Standards Track spec 🌸 It's part of the IETF stream with ISSN 2070-1721. It obsoletes RFC 7302, so if you see that one around, this is the newer version 🦋

Abstract ✨

EIDR Identifiers are used to give motion pictures and TV shows a globally unique ID 🎞️ This doc defines the formal Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace Identifier (NID) for EIDR Identifiers. It also says this document obsoletes RFC 7302 🫶

Status of This Memo 📜

So this one is not an Internet Standards Track spec. It's just published for info 💅 It's still an IETF product that represents the consensus of the IETF community, got public review, and was approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not every IESG-approved doc is up for any level of Internet Standard, so check Section 2 of RFC 7841 for the deets 🙈

For the current status, errata, and how to send feedback, go to http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7972 🔗

Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved 🌈

This doc is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents, at http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info, as they stand on the publication date. Read those carefully because they explain your rights and restrictions. Any Code Components pulled out of this doc must include the Simplified BSD License text, as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions, and they come with no warranty, as described in the Simplified BSD License ⚖️

Table of Contents 🧚

1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
2.  Completed URN Namespace Definition Template . . . . . . . . .   3
3.  Namespace Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
4.  Community Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
  7.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
  7.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
Appendix A.  Summary of Changes (Informative) . . . . . . . . . .  10
  A.1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
  A.2.  Changes from RFC 7302 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1. Introduction 🌷

This document defines the formal URN Namespace Identifier (NID) for EIDR Identifiers. That's the whole point of this one 💖

EIDR Identifiers are centrally registered, globally unique IDs for audiovisual works and their variants, mostly film and TV. When a work is registered, a unique set of metadata parameters describing it gets bound to its EIDR Identifier 🎀

EIDR Identifiers are a special kind of DOI Name, handed out by the EIDR Association just for audiovisual works. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system gives you infrastructure for persistent, unique IDs for objects of any type, and it's specified in [ISO26234]. A DOI Name is the identifier permanently assigned to an object. DOI Names bring you persistence, global uniqueness, and an open resolution infrastructure, which is honestly iconic 👑

As a DOI Name, an EIDR Identifier has two components: a prefix that the DOI Registration Authority assigns exclusively to the EIDR Association, and a suffix that the EIDR Association defines. Right now EIDR Identifiers use the prefix 10.5240, but more prefixes might show up later 🦋

Here's an example of an EIDR Identifier in its canonical form:

               10.5240/7791-8534-2C23-9030-8610-5

In that one, 10.5240 is the prefix and 7791-8534-2C23-9030-8610-5 is the suffix.

The canonical URN version of the same EIDR Identifier looks like this:

               urn:eidr:10.5240:7791-8534-2C23-9030-8610-5

Quick heads up: the : is used as the separator between prefix and suffix, because / is a URN reserved character. Not me being random 🙈

[EIDR-OVERVIEW] and [EIDR-INTRO] have more background info if you want to go deeper 🧠

This document obsoletes RFC 7302. Check Appendix A for a summary of changes 💅

2. Completed URN Namespace Definition Template 🎀

So the namespace definition follows the template in [RFC3406], and here's how it shakes out 💖

Namespace ID: the NID is eidr.

Registration Information: it's Version 1, registered on 2014-03-03 ✨

Declared registrant of the namespace: the name is Entertainment Identifier Registry Association, and the address is:

c/o Alliances Management
544 Hillside Road
Redwood City, CA 94062
USA

The contact info is URL: http://eidr.org/contact/ and Email: info@eidr.org 📬

Declaration of syntactic structure: an EIDR Identifier is a special kind of DOI Name (see [ISO26234]). That means it has two components: a prefix called EIDR-PREFIX and a suffix called EIDR-SUFFIX. The URN representation, URN-EIDR, follows this syntax (written using [RFC5234]):

               URN-EIDR = "urn:eidr:" EIDR-NSS
               EIDR-NSS = EIDR-PREFIX ":" EIDR-SUFFIX
               EIDR-PREFIX = 1*EIDR-CHARS
               EIDR-SUFFIX = 1*EIDR-CHARS
               EIDR-CHARS = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_"

Right now the only EIDR-PREFIX value in use is 10.5240. The EIDR Association might bring in more prefix values that follow the EIDR-PREFIX syntax later on. Every one of those extra prefixes will be paired with suffix values that match a subset of the EIDR-SUFFIX syntax. Those extra prefixes and their suffixes will be documented in future revisions of this registration. Stay tuned 👀

An implementation can handle an EIDR-NSS with an unknown prefix as an opaque string, following the "Rules for Lexical Equivalence" below. It can also resolve it as a generic DOI Name, following the "Process for identifier resolution" below 🧚

When EIDR-PREFIX is 10.5240, the EIDR-SUFFIX syntax gets even stricter, following the RP2079-SUFFIX syntax from [SMPTERP2079]:

               RP2079-SUFFIX = 5(4HEXDIG "-") CHECK
               CHECK         = DIGIT / ALPHA

CHECK is the Mod 37,36 check character from [ISO7064], and it's computed over the 20 hexadecimal digits (HEXDIG) in RP2079-SUFFIX 🔢

EXAMPLE:

urn:eidr:10.5240:7791-8534-2C23-9030-8610-5

Relevant ancillary documentation: [ISO26234] covers DOI Name syntax and registration. [SMPTERP2079] covers the syntax of the EIDR Identifier with prefix 10.5240 📚

Identifier uniqueness considerations: an EIDR Identifier is a DOI Name. The ISO 26324 Registration Authority makes sure DOI Names are unique, so the URN-EIDR derived from an EIDR Identifier is guaranteed unique and never reassigned. An EIDR Identifier is also tied to a single URN-EIDR. Iconic consistency 💯

Identifier persistence considerations: an EIDR Identifier is a DOI Name, and the ISO 26324 Registration Authority makes sure a DOI Name stays valid indefinitely. So the URN-EIDR derived from an EIDR Identifier stays valid indefinitely too 🌈

Process of identifier assignment: the EIDR Association registers each EIDR Identifier with the ISO 26324 Registration Authority 📝

People working in motion picture and TV, whether they make the content or distribute it and offer related services, can apply to be registrants. Registrants pay an annual membership fee, and the amount depends on how big the company is 💸

Process for identifier resolution: as a DOI Name, resolution of the EIDR Identifier tied to an EIDR-NSS is handled by the ISO 26324 Registration Authority 🔍

The ISO 26324 Registration Authority runs a web service that resolves the EIDR Identifier tied to an EIDR-NSS. You do that by sending an HTTP GET request to the following URI (see [RFC7231] and [RFC2818]):

                     "https://doi.org/" URN-EIDR

If the EIDR Identifier exists, you get back an XML Schema instance document (see [XMLSchema]) with the metadata for that identifier. If it doesn't exist, you get the HTTP status code 404 Not Found instead 😭

EXAMPLE:

https://doi.org/urn:eidr:10.5240:7791-8534-2C23-9030-8610-5

NOTE: the web service uses the HTTP Accept header to figure out what format to send back. If you're using a web browser to open the resource above, you add the query string ?locatt=type:Full to the URI to explicitly ask for an XML response 💻

The EIDR Association also runs extra services made just for EIDR users (see [EIDR-SERVICES] and [DOI-EIDR-PROXY]). They come with extra features, like registering EIDR Identifiers and web-based GUI tools 🛠️

Rules for Lexical Equivalence: lexical equivalence of the URN-EIDR is defined by a case-insensitive string match 🔤

NOTE: the URN-EIDR includes the urn:eidr: string, as specified under "Declaration of syntactic structure" ✨

Conformance with URN Syntax: as specified above, the URN-EIDR syntax is a subset of the URN syntax from [RFC2141] 📐

Validation mechanism: the validity of an EIDR-NSS can only be guaranteed by finishing the resolution process. For EIDR-NSS with an EIDR-PREFIX of 10.5240, you can also use the CHECK value for integrity checking, as specified above 🧮

Scope: EIDR Identifiers are centrally registered, globally unique identifiers for audiovisual works worldwide 🌍

3. Namespace Considerations 🧩

EIDR Identifiers are meant for Internet applications, where URNs are routinely used to identify audiovisual resources. There's no direct mapping from EIDR Identifiers to existing URN namespaces, so this one really stands on its own 💜

4. Community Considerations 🫂

The main registrants of EIDR Identifiers are producers and distributors of audiovisual works, metadata aggregators, and audiovisual archives. Any bona fide member of the ecosystem can become an EIDR member and register any work 🎬

Anyone can use EIDR Identifiers to unambiguously identify an audiovisual asset and retrieve its underlying metadata. The big wins are for works in wide distribution, for managing long or complicated distribution chains, and for pulling together info from multiple sources. It's giving teamwork 🤝

5. IANA Considerations 🦄

IANA has registered the Formal URN Namespace 'eidr' in the "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespaces" registry, using the registration template in Section 2 of this document 🎉

(part 2 is coming next, so don't go anywhere, bestie! 💖)

6. Security Considerations 🔒✨

Okay bestie, this part is serious, so listen up 👂💅. This document only specifies the syntax of the URN-EIDR namespace and makes no security representations 🫣. The assignment and resolution processes are defined outside this document, by the EIDR Association and the ISO 26324 Registration Authority, so they're out of scope here 🌸.

⚠️ Here's the part that matters most: if you use an EIDR Identifier as the criteria for getting into restricted resources and you don't follow the syntactic and lexical equivalence rules in this spec, you could accidentally grant unauthorized access 😱💀. Not a vibe. Be careful, babe 🫶.

7. References 📚

7.1. Normative References

  • [ISO26234] International Organization for Standardization (ISO), "ISO 26324:2012 Information and documentation -- Digital object identifier system", ISO Standard 26324, June 2012. 🧾
  • [ISO7064] International Organization for Standardization, "Information technology -- Security techniques -- Check character systems", ISO Standard 7064, February 2003. 🔢
  • [RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, DOI 10.17487/RFC2141, May 1997, http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2141. 🦋
  • [RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008, http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234. 🧩
  • [SMPTERP2079] Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, "Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Name and Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR) Identifier Representations", DOI 10.5594/SMPTE.RP2079.2013, SMPTE RP 2079, 2014. 🎬

7.2. Informative References

Appendix A. Summary of Changes (Informative) 🦋

A.1. Introduction

This Appendix gives a summary of the changes between revisions of this spec 💫. It's informative, not exhaustive, so if you want the full official tea, the people at [rfcdiff] say to use tools like it 🍵.

A.2. Changes from RFC 7302

  • "Process for identifier resolution" paragraph: The syntax for the URI supplied to the web service is modified to use (a) the 'https' scheme and (b) the URN-EIDR representation of the EIDR Identifier. 🔄✨

Author's Address 🎀

Pierre-Anthony Lemieux Sandflow Consulting LLC

Email: pal@sandflow.com 💌

📦 where this page comes from