idnits 2.17.1 draft-spinosa-urn-lex-05.txt: Checking boilerplate required by RFC 5378 and the IETF Trust (see https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- No issues found here. Checking nits according to https://www.ietf.org/id-info/1id-guidelines.txt: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- No issues found here. Checking nits according to https://www.ietf.org/id-info/checklist : ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- == There are 2 instances of lines with non-RFC2606-compliant FQDNs in the document. Miscellaneous warnings: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- == The copyright year in the IETF Trust and authors Copyright Line does not match the current year -- The document date (March 5, 2012) is 4436 days in the past. Is this intentional? Checking references for intended status: Informational ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 3406 (Obsoleted by RFC 8141) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 2141 (Obsoleted by RFC 8141) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 5226 (Obsoleted by RFC 8126) Summary: 3 errors (**), 0 flaws (~~), 2 warnings (==), 1 comment (--). Run idnits with the --verbose option for more detailed information about the items above. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 INTERNET-DRAFT P. Spinosa 3 Intended Status: Informational ITTIG/CNR 4 Expires: September 6, 2012 E. Francesconi 5 ITTIG/CNR 6 C. Lupo 7 (ICT consultant) 8 March 5, 2012 10 A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace 11 for Sources of Law (LEX) 12 draft-spinosa-urn-lex-05.txt 14 Status of this Memo 16 This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the 17 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 19 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 20 Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that 21 other groups may also distribute working documents as 22 Internet-Drafts. 24 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 25 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 26 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 27 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 29 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 30 http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html 32 The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at 33 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html 35 This Internet-Draft will expire on September 6, 2012. 37 Copyright Notice 39 Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the 40 document authors. All rights reserved. 42 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal 43 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents 44 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of 45 publication of this document. Please review these documents 46 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect 47 to this document. 49 Abstract 51 This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace 52 Identification (NID) convention as prescribed by the World Wide Web 53 Consortium (W3C) for identifying, naming, assigning, and managing 54 persistent resources in the legal domain. 56 Table of Contents 58 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 59 1.1 The Purpose of Namespace "lex" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 60 1.2 Entities Supporting this Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 61 1.3 The Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 62 1.4 General Characteristics of the System . . . . . . . . . . . 8 63 1.5 Linking a "lex" Name to a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 64 1.6 Use of "lex" Names in References . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 65 1.7 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 66 1.8 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 67 2 Specification Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 68 2.1 Namespace ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 69 2.2 Registration Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 70 2.3 Syntax Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 71 2.4 Identifier structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 72 3 General Syntax of the "lex" Identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 73 3.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters . . . . . . . . . . . 12 74 3.2 Reserved Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 75 3.3 Case sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 76 3.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs . . . . . . . . . 14 77 3.5 Replacement of Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks 14 78 3.6 Abbreviation Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 79 3.7 Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 80 3.8 Date Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 81 3.9 Ordinal Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 82 4 Creation of the Source of Law "lex" Identifier . . . . . . . . 15 83 4.1 Basic Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 84 4.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation . . . . . . . . . 15 85 4.3 The Structure of the Local Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 86 4.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level . . . 17 87 4.5 Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 88 4.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level 18 89 4.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation 90 Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 91 4.8 Sources of Law References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 92 5 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment . . . . . . . . . . 22 93 5.1 Specifying the element of the URN "lex" . 22 94 5.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment . . . . . . 22 95 5.3 Identifier Uniqueness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 96 5.4 Identifier persistence considerations . . . . . . . . . . 23 97 6 Principles of the Resolution Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 98 6.1 The General Architecture of the System . . . . . . . . . 24 99 6.2 Catalogues for Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 100 6.3 Suggested resolver behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 101 7 Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 102 7.1 Conformance with URN Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 103 7.2 Validation mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 104 7.3 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 105 7.4 Namespace Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 106 7.5 Community Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 107 7.6 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 108 7.7 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 109 8 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 110 8.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 111 8.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 112 9 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 113 10 Author's Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 114 Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of 115 the "lex" namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 116 Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level . 35 117 B1 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 118 B1.1 Indication of the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 119 B1.2 Multiple Issuers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 120 B1.3 Indication of the Issuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 121 B1.4 Indication of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 122 B1.5 Indication of the Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 123 B1.6 Conventions for the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 124 B2 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 125 B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure . . . 36 126 B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure . . . . . . 37 127 B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative 128 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 129 B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases . 37 130 B3 The
element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 131 B3.1 Indication of the Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 132 B3.2 Multiple Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 133 B3.3 Unnumbered Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 134 B3.4 Multiple Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 135 B4 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 136 B4.1 Formal Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 137 B4.2 Annexes of Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 138 Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the Element of the 139 Expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 140 C1 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 141 C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document . . . . . . 41 142 C1.2 Identification of the Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 144 1 Introduction 146 1.1 The Purpose of Namespace "lex" 148 The purpose of the "lex" namespace is to assign an unequivocal 149 identifier, in standard format, to documents that are sources of law. 150 To the extent of this namespace, "sources of law" include any legal 151 document within the domain of legislation, case law and 152 administrative acts or regulations; moreover potential "sources of 153 law" (acts under the process of law formation, as bills) are included 154 as well. Therefore "legal doctrine" is explicitly not covered. 156 The identifier is conceived so that its construction depends only on 157 the characteristics of the document itself and is, therefore, 158 independent from the document's on-line availability, its physical 159 location, and access mode. 161 This identifier will be used as a way to represent the references 162 (and more generally, any type of relation) among the various sources 163 of law. In an on-line environment with resources distributed among 164 different Web publishers, uniform resource names allow simplified 165 global interconnection of legal documents by means of automated 166 hypertext linking. 168 1.2 Entities Supporting this Standard 170 The following entities support this proposal: 172 - ITTIG/CNR (Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of 173 the Italian National Research Council) - Italy; 174 - National Centre for ICT in Public Administration - Italy; 175 - PRODASEN - IT Department of the Federal Senate - Brazil; 176 - LII (Legal Information Institute), Cornell Law School - USA 178 1.3 The Context 180 In the last few years a number of initiatives have arisen in the 181 field of legal document management. 183 Since 2001 the Italian Government, through the National Center for 184 Information Technology in the Public Administration, the Ministry of 185 Justice and ITTIG-CNR (the Institute of Legal Information Theory and 186 Techniques of the Italian National Research Council) promoted the 187 NormeInRete project. It was aimed at introducing standards for 188 sources of law description and identification using XML and URN 189 techniques. 191 Other national initiatives in Europe introduced standards for the 192 description of legal sources [FRAN]: for example the Metalex project, 193 promoted by the University of Amsterdam and adopted by the Dutch Tax 194 and Customs Administration, the Belgian Public Centers for Welfare 195 and others; LexDania project in Denmark supported by the Danish 196 Ministry of Justice; CHLexML in Switzerland developed by COPIUR, the 197 Coordination Office for the Electronic Publication of Legal Data 198 Federal Office of Justice; eLaw in Austria mainly coordinated by the 199 Austrian Parliament. 201 Such initiatives, based in synergies between government, national 202 research institutes, and universities, have defined national XML 203 standards for legal document management, as well as schemes for legal 204 document identification. 206 Outside Europe, similar initiatives have faced similar problems. For 207 example, the Brazilian Senate carried out a feasibility study to 208 provide unique and transparent identifiers to sources of law on the 209 basis of the IFLA-FRBR model. 210 Similarly, the Akoma Ntoso (Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented 211 Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and 212 Ontologies) project provides a set of guidelines for e-Parliament 213 services in a Pan-African context by proposing an XML document schema 214 providing sophisticated description possibilities for several 215 Parliamentary document types (including bills, acts and parliamentary 216 records, etc.). 217 Finally, the Tasmanian Government provided advanced legislative 218 information services through the EnAct project. It gave searchable 219 consolidated Tasmanian legislation by automating much of the 220 legislative drafting and consolidation process, as well as using SGML 221 document representation. Numerous less-visible efforts in the United 222 States and elsewhere have struggled with similar issues. 224 Several of these identifiers are based on a URN schema. The first 225 national standard was defined in Italy within the NormeInRete 226 project; to this the Danish LexDania and the Brazilian Lexml standard 227 followed. Hungary, Slovenia and Switzerland expressed their interest 228 in URN identifier for legislation as well. All these standards have a 229 common internal structure, regarding both the hierarchy and the 230 elements content. 232 In today's information society the processes of political, social and 233 economic integration of European Union member states as well as the 234 increasing integration of the world-wide legal and economic processes 235 are causing a growing interest in exchanging legal information 236 knowledge at national and trans-national levels. 237 The growing desire for improved quality and accessibility of legal 238 information amplifies the need for interoperability among legal 239 information systems across national boundaries. A common open 240 standard used to identify sources of law at international level is an 241 essential prerequisite for interoperability. 243 Interest groups within several countries have already expressed their 244 intention to adopt a shared solution based on a URN technique. 245 The need for a unequivocal identifier of sources of law in different 246 EU Member States, based on open standards and able to provide 247 advanced modalities of document hyper-linking, has been expressed in 248 several conferences by representatives of the Office for Official 249 Publications of the European Communities (OPOCE), with the aim of 250 promoting interoperability among national and European institution 251 information systems. Similar concerns have been raised by 252 international groups concerned with free access to legal information, 253 and the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private 254 International Law is considering a resolution that would encourage 255 member states to "adopt neutral methods of citation of their legal 256 materials, including methods that are medium-neutral, provider- 257 neutral and internationally consistent". In a similar direction the 258 CEN Metalex initiative is moving, at European level, towards the 259 definition of a standard interchange format for sources of law, 260 including recommendations for defining naming conventions to them. 262 The need of semantic Web unequivocal identifiers for sources of law 263 is of particular interest also in the domain of case law. Such need 264 is extremely felt within both common law systems, where cases are the 265 main law sources, and civil law systems, for the importance of 266 providing an integrated access to cases and legislation, as well as 267 to track the relationships between them. This domain is characterized 268 by a high degree of fragmentation in case law information systems, 269 which usually lack interoperability. 270 Recently in the European Union, the community institutions have 271 stressed the need for citizens, businesses, lawyers, prosecutors and 272 judges to become more aware not only of (directly applicable) EU law, 273 but also of the various national legal systems. The growing 274 importance of national judiciaries for the application of Community 275 law was recently stressed in the resolution of the European 276 Parliament of 9 July 2008 on the role of the national judge in the 277 European judicial system. 278 Similarly the European e-Justice action plan 2009-2013 of the Council 279 of the European Union underlined the importance of cross-border 280 access to national case law, as well as the need for its 281 standardisation, in view of an integrated access in a decentralized 282 architecture. In this view the Working Party on Legal Data Processing 283 (e-Law) of the Council of the European Union formed a task group to 284 study the possibilities for improving cross-border access to national 285 case law. Taking notice of the report of the Working Party's task 286 group the Council of the EU decided in 2009 to elaborate on a 287 uniform, European system for the identification of case law (ECLI: 289 European Case-Law Identifier) and uniform Dublin Core-based set of 290 metadata. 292 URN:LEX is conceived to be general enough, so to provide guidance at 293 the core of the standard and sufficient flexibility to cover a wide 294 variety of needs for identifying all the legal documents of different 295 nature, namely legislative, case-law and administrative acts. 297 The "urn:lex" naming convention has interpreted all these 298 recommendations, proposing an original solution for sources of law 299 identification. 301 1.4 General Characteristics of the System 303 Registrants wish now to promote interoperability among legal 304 information systems by the definition of a namespace convention and 305 structure that will create and manage identifiers for legal 306 documents. The identifiers will be: 307 - globally unique 308 - transparent 309 - persistent 310 - location-independent, and 311 - language-neutral. 312 These qualities will facilitate legal document management as well as 313 provide a mechanism of stable cross-collections and cross-country 314 references. 315 Language-neutrality is an especially important feature that will 316 promote adoption of the standard by organizations that must adhere to 317 official-language requirements. The proposed standard will provide 318 useful guidance to both public and private groups that create, 319 promulgate, and publish legal documents. Registrants wish to minimize 320 the potential for creating conflicting proprietary schemes, while 321 preserving sufficient flexibility to allow for diverse document types 322 and to respect the need for local control of collections by an 323 equally diverse assortment of administrative entities. 325 As usual, the problem is to provide the right amount guidance at the 326 core of the standard while providing sufficient flexibility to cover 327 a wide variety of needs. The proposed "lex" standard does this by 328 splitting the identifier into parts. The first part uses a 329 predetermined standard ("country/jurisdiction name standard") to 330 specify the country (or more generally the jurisdiction) of origin 331 for the legal document being identified; the remainder ("local name") 332 is intended for local use in identifying documents issued in that 333 country or jurisdiction. This second part depends only on sources of 334 law identification system operating in that nation and it is mainly 335 composed by a formalized information related to the enacting 336 authority, the type of measure, the details and possibly the annex. 338 The identification system based on uniform names MUST include: 339 - a schema for assigning names capable of representing unambiguously 340 any addressed source of law, namely legislation, case law and 341 administrative acts, issued by any authority (intergovernmental, 342 supranational, national, regional and local) at any time (past, 343 present and future); 344 - a resolution mechanism - in a distributed environment - that ties a 345 uniform name to the on-line location of the corresponding 346 resources. 347 This document only considers the first of these requirements. It also 348 contains a few references to the architecture of the resolution 349 service and to the corresponding software. 351 1.5 Linking a "lex" Name to a Document 353 The "lex" name is linked to the document through meta-information 354 which may be specified: 355 - internally to the document itself through a specific element within 356 an XML schema or by an HTML META tag; 357 - externally by means of an RDF triple, a specific attribute in a 358 database, etc. 359 One of these modalities is necessary for enabling automated 360 construction and updating of catalogues (distributed and centralized) 361 and the implementation of resolvers that associate the uniform name 362 of a document with its physical location(s). The standard assumes no 363 particular relationship between the originator of the document, its 364 publisher, and the implementer of catalogues or resolution services. 365 They may be the same entity, or not. 367 1.6 Use of "lex" Names in References 369 "lex" names will be used on a large scale in references as a HREF 370 attribute value of the hypertext link to the referred document. 371 This link can be created in two ways: 372 - by manually inserting, in the referring document, the link with the 373 uniform name: this is a burdensome procedure especially for 374 documents that are already on-line; 375 - by automatically constructing (either permanently or temporarily) 376 the link with the uniform name, through reference parsers of a 377 text: this is a more time-saving procedure even if subject to a 378 certain percentage of errors, since references are not always 379 accurate or complete. This solution could nevertheless be 380 acceptable for already published documents. 381 In any case, whatever the method adopted is, new documents produced 382 in XML format compliant with the relative DTD/XMLSchema, SHOULD 383 express references through the uniform name of the document referred 384 to. 386 1.7 Definitions 388 According to this document, the following terms are used in the 389 following meaning: 390 - Source of Law: 391 is a general concept, and is used to refer to legislation, case 392 law, regulations and administrative acts. In its broadest sense, 393 the source of law is anything that can be conceived of as the 394 originator of 'erga omnes' legal rules. In this document "source of 395 law" refers also to acts during their formation cycle as bills that 396 might or might not become sources of law; 397 - Registrar: 398 is an organization which shares and defines in any country or 399 jurisdiction the assignment of the main components of the resource 400 identifier through which its uniqueness is guaranteed. This task 401 includes the definition of possible jurisdiction unit and the 402 primary elements (issuing authority and type of legal measure) of 403 uniform name, according to the characteristics of its own state or 404 institution organization. 406 1.8 Terminology 408 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 409 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 410 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 412 2 Specification Template 414 2.1 Namespace ID 416 "lex" requested according to [RFC3406]. 418 2.2 Registration Information 420 Version Number: 1.0 421 Date: 2011-04-01 423 Declared registrant of the namespace: 425 Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG) 426 Italian National Research Council (CNR) 427 Via de' Barucci, 20 428 50127 Florence 429 Italy 431 e-mail: lex@ittig.cnr.it 433 2.3 Syntax Used in this Document 434 This document uses the syntax common to many Internet RFCs, which is 435 based on the BNF (Backus-Naur Form) meta-language. In particular: 436 - elements are included between angle brackets ("<" and ">"); 437 - an element is separated from its specification by the string "::="; 438 - alternative elements are separated from each other by a vertical 439 slash ("|"); 440 - character strings are enclosed in quotes (" and "); 441 - optional parts are enclosed by square brackets ("[" and "]"); 442 - a group of elements is enclosed by round brackets ("(" and ")"); 443 - a symbol or an expression following an element or a group of 444 elements indicates a factor of repetition, and, as in the regular 445 expressions, takes the following formats: 446 - ? : 0 or 1 time; 447 - + : 1 or more times; 448 - * : 0 or more times; 449 - {n} : times; 450 - {n,m}: from to times. 452 2.4 Identifier structure 454 The identifier has a hierarchical structure as follows: 456 "urn:lex:" 458 where NSS is the Namespace Specific String composed as follows: 460 ::=":" 462 where: 464 is the part providing the identification of the 465 jurisdiction, generally corresponding to the country, where the 466 source of law is issued. It is also possible to represent 467 international organizations (either states or public administrations 468 or private entities); 470 is the uniform name of the source of law in the country 471 or jurisdiction where it is issued; its internal structure is common 472 to the already adopted schemas. It is able to represent all the 473 aspects of an intellectual production, as it is a legal document, 474 from its initial idea, through its evolution during the time, to its 475 realisation by different means (paper, digital, etc.). 477 The element is composed of two specific fields: 479 ::=[";"]* 481 where: 483 is usually the identification code of the country 484 where the source of law is issued; this code follows the standard 485 [ISO3166] Alpha-2 (it=Italy, fr=France, dk=Denmark, etc.) which 486 usually is identical to the country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). In 487 case such codes are not identical (as for United Kingdom, whose ISO 488 3166 code is .gb while its ccTLD is .uk), one of them is chosen as 489 . In case of multi-national (e.g., European Union) 490 or international (e.g., United Nations, Free Software Foundation) 491 organizations the Top Level Domain Name (e.g., "eu") or the Domain 492 Name (e.g., "un.org", "wto.int") is used instead of ISO 3166 code. In 493 case such multi-national or international organization does not have 494 a registered domain, in order to avoid ambiguities or collisions with 495 actual domains, a domain name (according to the english acronym of 496 the organization name) under the virtual domain "lex" is used. For 497 example, the jurisdiction code of the European Economic Community is 498 "eec.lex"; 500 are the possible administrative hierarchical sub- 501 structures defined by each country or organisation according to its 502 own legal system. This additional information can be used where two 503 or more levels of legislative or judicial production exist (e.g., 504 federal, state and municipality level) and the same bodies may be 505 present in each jurisdiction. Then acts of the same type issued by 506 similar authorities in different areas differ for the jurisdiction- 507 unit specification. An example can be the following: 508 "br:governo:decreto" (decree of federal government), 509 "br;sao.paulo:governo:decreto" (decree of SU+00E3o Paulo state) and 510 "br;sao.paulo;campinas:governo: decreto" (decree of Campinas 511 municipality). 513 Examples of law sources identifiers are: 515 urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2003-09-21;456 (Italian act) 516 urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-12-06;321 (French act) 517 urn:lex:es:estado:ley:2002-07-12;123 (Spanish act) 518 urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 (Glarus Swiss Canton 519 decree) 520 urn:lex:eu:commission:directive:2010-03-09;2010-19-EU (EU Commission 521 Directive) 522 urn:lex:us:federal.supreme.court:decision:1963-03-18;372.us.335 (US 523 FSC decision) 524 urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273 (Decision of the 525 Belgian Council of State) 527 3 General Syntax of the "lex" Identifier 529 3.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters 530 These characters are defined in accordance with the [RFC2141] "URN 531 Syntax". For various reasons, later explained, in the "lex" 532 only a sub-set of characters is allowed. All other characters are 533 either eliminated or converted. 535 For the full syntax of the uniform names in the "lex" space, please 536 see Attachment A. 538 3.2 Reserved Characters 540 These characters MUST always and uniquely be used for the assigned 541 purpose. 542 The first category includes those characters bearing a specific 543 meaning in the general creation of the URI (Uniform Resource 544 Identifier)[RFC3986]: 546 "%" "/" "?" "#" 548 The following characters instead are reserved in the specific "lex" 549 namespace: 551 - "@" separator of the expression, that contains information on 552 version and language; 553 - "$" separator of the manifestation, that contains information on 554 format, editor, etc.; 555 - ":" separator of the main elements of the name at any entity; 556 - ";" separator of level. It identifies the introduction of an 557 element at a hierarchically lower level, or the introduction of a 558 specification; 559 - "+" separator of the repetitions of an entire main element (e.g., 560 multiple authorities); 561 - "," separator of the repetitions of individual components in the 562 main elements, each bearing the same level of specificity (e.g., 563 multiple numbers); 564 - "~" separator of the partition identifier in references (e.g., 565 paragraph of an article); 566 - "*" and "!" are reserved for future expansions. 568 3.3 Case sensitivity 570 The specific name of the URN, as with URLs, is case-sensitive. 571 Since the case does not change the logical identification of the 572 source of law, the names belonging to the "lex" namespace are 573 considered functionally equivalent independently from the case. To 574 take advantage of memory caching, the specific name is always created 575 in lower case. 576 (e.g., "Ministry" will be recorded as "ministry") 578 3.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs 580 In order to keep editing and communication more simple and to avoid 581 character percent-encoding, it is strongly recommended that national 582 characters and diacritic signs are turned into base characters (e.g., 583 the Italian term "sanitU+00E0" converted into "sanita", the French 584 term "ministU+00E8re" converted into "ministere"). Otherwise, the 585 characters have to be percent-encoded according to the UTF-8 586 character encoding [STD63] (e.g., "sanitU+00E0" encoded into 587 "sanit%C3%A1"). 588 Anyway each country or jurisdiction decides the uniform names 589 encoding modality of all the sources of law issued within its 590 territory. 592 3.5 Replacement of Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks 594 All the language connectives (e.g., articles, prepositions, etc.), 595 the punctuation marks and all the special characters (as apostrophes, 596 dashes, etc.) are eliminated. The words left are connected each other 597 by a dot (".") which substitutes the "space". 598 (e.g., "Ministry of Finances, Budget and of Economic Planning" 599 becomes "ministry.finances.budget.economic.planning") 601 3.6 Abbreviation Expansion 603 All abbreviations indicating institutions (e.g., Min.), structures 604 (e.g., Dept.), or legal measures (e.g., reg.), MUST be expanded. 605 (e.g., "Min." must be reported as "ministry") 607 3.7 Acronyms 609 The use of acronyms might be confusing and encourage ambiguity in 610 uniform names (the same acronym may indicate two different 611 institutions or structures), therefore their expansion is strongly 612 recommended. 613 (e.g., "FAO" is to be expanded as "food.agriculture.organization") 615 3.8 Date Format 617 Dates are expressed by numbers in the ISO-8601 format: 619 yyyy-mm-dd 621 (e.g., "September 2, 99" will be written as "1999-09-02") 623 3.9 Ordinal Numbers 625 Any ordinal number included in a component of a document name (e.g., 626 in the description of an institution body) MUST be indicated in 627 Arabic numerals, regardless to the original expression: whether in 628 Roman numerals, or with an adjective, or in Arabic numeral with apex, 629 etc. (IV, third, 1U+00B0, 2^, etc.). 630 (e.g., "Department IV" becomes "department.4") 632 4 Creation of the Source of Law "lex" Identifier 634 4.1 Basic Principles 636 The uniform name must identify one and only one document (more 637 precisely a "bibliographic entity") and is created in such a way that 638 it is: 639 - self-explanatory ; 640 - identifiable through simple and clear rules; 641 - compatible with the practice commonly used for references; 642 - able to be created by references in the text, automatically (by 643 parser) or manually; 644 - representative of both the formal and the substantive aspects of 645 the document. 647 4.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation 649 According to FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) 650 model developed by IFLA (International Federation of Library 651 Associations and Institutions), in a source of law, as in any 652 intellectual production, 4 fundamental entities (or aspects) can be 653 specified. 655 The first 2 entities reflect its contents: 656 - work: identifies a distinct intellectual creation; in our case, it 657 identifies a source of law both in its being (as it has been issued 658 or proposed) and in its becoming (as it is modified over time); 659 - expression: identifies a specific intellectual realisation of a 660 work; in our case it identifies every different (original or up-to- 661 date) version of the source of law over time and/or language in 662 which the text is expressed; 663 while the other 2 entities relate to its form: 664 - manifestation: identifies a concrete realisation of an expression; 665 in our case it identifies realizations in different media 666 (printing, digital, etc.), encoding formats (XML, PDF, etc.), or 667 other publishing characteristics; 668 - item: identifies a specific copy of a manifestation; in our case it 669 identifies individual physical copies as they are found in 670 particular physical locations. 672 In this document the FRBR model has been interpreted for the specific 673 characteristics of the legal domain. In particular, a part from the 674 language which does produce a specific expression, the discriminative 675 criterion between expression and manifestation is based on the 676 difference of the juridical effects that a variation can provide with 677 respect to the involved actors (citizens, parties, institutions). In 678 this scenario the main characteristic of the expression of an act is 679 represented by its validity over the time, during which it provides 680 the same juridical effects. These effects change for amendments or 681 annulments of other legislative or jurisprudential acts. Therefore 682 notes, summarizations, comments, anonymizations and other editorial 683 activities over the same text do not produce different expressions, 684 but different manifestations. 686 4.3 The Structure of the Local Name 688 The of "lex" namespace MUST contain all the necessary 689 pieces of information enabling the unequivocal identification of a 690 legal document. 691 In the legal domain, at the "work" level, they are essentially four: 692 the enacting authority, the type of measure, the details and the 693 annex, if any. 694 It is often necessary to differentiate various expressions, that is: 695 - the original version and all the amended versions of the same 696 document; 697 - the versions of the text expressed in the different official 698 languages of the state or organization. 699 Finally the uniform name allows a distinction among diverse 700 manifestations, which may be produced in multiple locations using 701 different means and formats. 702 In every case, the basic identifier of the source of law (work) 703 remains the same, but information is added regarding the specific 704 version under consideration (expression); similarly a suffix is added 705 to the expression for representing the characteristics of the 706 publication (manifestation). 707 The information which forms a source of law uniform name at each 708 level (work, expression, manifestation) is expressed in the official 709 language of the related jurisdiction; in case of more official 710 languages (as in Switzerland) or more involved jurisdictions (as in 711 international treaties), more language-dependent names (aliases) are 712 created. 714 Therefore, the more general structure of the national name appears as 715 follows: 717 ::=["@"]?["$"]? 719 However, consistent with legislative practice, the uniform name of 720 the main original provision (work) becomes the identifier of an 721 entire class of documents which includes: the original main document, 722 the annexes, and all their versions, languages and formats 723 subsequently generated. 725 4.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level 727 The structure of the document identifier is made of the four 728 fundamental elements mentioned above, clearly distinguished one from 729 the other in accordance with an order identifying increasingly narrow 730 domains and competences: 732 ::=":"":"
[":"]* 734 where: 736 is the issuing or proposing authority of the measure 737 (e.g., State, Ministry, Municipality, Court, etc.); 739 is the type of the measure, both public nature (e.g., 740 constitution, act, treaty, regulation, decree, decision, etc.) as 741 well as private one (e.g., license, agreement, etc); 743
are the terms associated to the measure, typically the date 744 (usually the signature date) and the number included in the heading 745 of the act; 747 is the identifier of the annex, if any (e.g., Annex 1). 749 In case of annexes, both the main document and its annexes have their 750 own uniform name so that they can individually be referenced; the 751 identifier of the annex adds a suffix to that of the main document. 752 In similar way the identifier of an annex of an annex adds an ending 753 to that of the annex which it is attached to. 755 The main elements of the national name are generally divided into 756 several elementary components, and, for each, specific rules of 757 representation are established (criteria, modalities, syntax and 758 order). 759 For the details regarding each element, please see the Attachment B. 761 Examples of identifiers are: 763 urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2006-05-14;22 764 urn:lex:uk:ministry.justice:decree:1999-10-07;45 765 urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 766 urn:lex:es:tribunal.supremo:decision:2001-09-28;68 767 urn:lex:fr:assemblee.nationale:proposition.loi:13.legislature;1762 768 urn:lex:br:estado:constituicao:1988-10-05;lex-1 769 urn:lex:fsf.org:free.software.foundation:general.public.license:2007- 770 06-29;lex-1 771 urn:lex:nl:hoge.raad:besluit:2008-04-01;bc8581 773 It is worth to note that the type of measure is important to identify 774 case law, as well as legislation, especially within the legal systems 775 where cases, by tradition, are identified only through the year of 776 release and a number. Since the aim of the "urn:lex" schema is to 777 identify specific materials, the type of measure or the full date are 778 able to provide discrimination between materials belonging to a 779 specific case. 781 Here below is an example where the type of measure or the full date 782 are essential for identify specific materials of a case: 783 - 4/59 Judgment of the EEC Court of Justice 04/04/1960, Mannesmann AG 784 and others / ECSC High Authority 785 urn:lex:eec.lex:court.justice:judgment:1960-04-04;4-59 786 - 4/59 Order of the EEC Court of Justice 18/05/1960, Mannesmann AG 787 and others / ECSC High Authority 788 urn:lex:eec.lex:court.justice:order:1960-05-18;4-59 790 4.5 Aliases 792 International treaties involve more jurisdictions (the signing ones) 793 so they are represented through more identifiers, each of them 794 related to an involved jurisdiction. For example, a bilateral France 795 and Germany treaty is identified through two URNs (aliases) belonging 796 to either "fr" or "de" jurisdiction 797 (e.g., "urn:lex:fr:etat:traite:..." and 798 "urn:lex:de:staat:vertrag:...") 799 since it pertains to both the French and the German jurisdiction. 801 In the states or organisations that have more than one official 802 language, a document has more identifiers, each of them expressed in 803 a different official language, basically a set of equivalent aliases. 804 This system permits manual or automated construction of the uniform 805 name of the referred source of law in the same language used in the 806 document itself. 807 (e.g., "urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2004-12-07;31", 808 "urn:lex:eu:consiglio:direttiva:2004-12-07;31", etc.) 810 Moreover, a document can be assigned more than one uniform name in 811 order to facilitate its linking to other documents. This option can 812 be used for documents that, although unique, are commonly referenced 813 from different perspectives. For example, the form of a document's 814 promulgation and its specific content (e.g., a Regulation promulgated 815 through a Decree of the President of the Republic). 817 4.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level 818 There may be several expressions of a legal text, connected to 819 specific versions or languages. 820 Each version is characterized by the period of time during which that 821 text is to be considered as the valid text (in force or effective). 822 The lifetime of a version ends with the issuing of the subsequent 823 version. 824 New versions of a text may be brought into existence by: 825 - changes in the text (amendments) due to the issuing of other legal 826 acts and to the subsequent production of updated or consolidated 827 texts; 828 - correction of publication errors (rectification or errata corrige); 829 - entry into or departure from a particular time span, depending on 830 the specific date in which different partitions of a text come into 831 force. 832 Each of such versions may be expressed in more than one language, 833 with each language-version having its own specific identifier. 834 The identifier of a source of law expression adds such information to 835 the work identifier, using the following main structure: 837 ::=[":"]? 839 where: 841 is the identifier of the version of the (original or 842 amended) source of law. In general it is expressed by the 843 promulgation date of the amending act; anyway other specific 844 information can be used for particular documents. If necessary, the 845 original version is specified by the string "original" (for the 846 details regarding this element, please see the Attachment C); 848 is the identification code of the language in which the 849 document is expressed, according to [ISO639-1] (it=Italian, 850 fr=French, de=German, etc.); in case the code of a language is not 851 included in this standard, the [ISO639-2] (3 letters) is used. This 852 information is not necessary when the text is expressed in the unique 853 official language of the country or jurisdiction. 855 Examples of document identifiers for expressions are: 857 urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@originel:fr (original version in 858 French) 859 urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@original:de (original version 860 in German) 861 urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:fr (amended version in 862 French) 863 urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:de (amended version 864 in German) 865 urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273@originel:fr 866 (original version in French of a Belgian decision) 868 4.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation Level 870 To identify a specific manifestation, the uniform name of the 871 expression is followed by a suitable suffix describing the: 872 - digital format (e.g., XML, HTML, PDF, etc.) expressed according to 873 the MIME Content-Type standard [RFC2045], where the "/" character 874 is to be substituted by the "-" sign; 875 - editorial staff who produced it, expressed according to its 876 Internet domain name; 877 - possible components of the expressions contained in the 878 manifestation. Such components are expressed by language-dependent 879 labels representing the whole document (in English "all") or the 880 main part of the document (in English "body") or the caption label 881 of the component itself (e.g. Table 1, Figure 2, etc.); 882 - other features of the document (e.g., anonymized decision text). 884 The suffix will thus read: 886 ::=[";""]* 887 ":"[";"]* 888 [":"[";"]*]? 889 [":"[";"]*]? 891 To indicate possible features or peculiarities, each main element of 892 the manifestation MAY be followed by further specifications, for 893 example as regards the version, for the archive 894 name and the electronic publisher, etc. 896 (examples: 897 the original version the Italian act 3 April 2000, n. 56 might have 898 the following manifestations with their relative uniform names: 899 - PDF format (vers. 1.7) of the whole act edited by the Italian 900 Parliament: 901 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application- 902 pdf;1.7:parlamento.it" 903 - XML format (version 2.2 DTD NIR) of the text of the act and PDF 904 format (version 1.7) of the "Figura 1" (figure 1) contained in the 905 body, edited by the Italian Senate: 906 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$text-xml;dtd-nir- 907 2.2:senato.it:testo" 908 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application- 909 pdf;1.7:senato.it:figura.1" 911 the Spanish URN of the html format of the whole Judgement of the 912 European Court of Justice n. 33/08 of 11/06/2009, in Spanish version, 913 published in the Jurifast data base in anonymized form: 915 "urn:lex:eu:tibunal.justicia:sentencia:2009-06-11;33- 916 08@original:es$text-html:juradmin.eu;jurifast:todo:anonimo") 918 Furthermore, it is useful to be able to assign a uniform name to a 919 manifestation (or to a part of it) in case non-textual objects are 920 involved. These may be multimedia objects that are non-textual in 921 their own right (e.g. geographic maps, photographs, etc.), or texts 922 recorded in non-textual formats, such as image scans of documents. 924 In these ways, a "lex" name permits: 925 - exploitation of all the advantages of an unequivocal identifier 926 that is independent of physical location; 927 - a means to provide choice among different existing manifestations 928 (e.g. XML or PDF formats, resolution degree of an image etc.) of 929 the same expression. 931 4.8 Sources of Law References 933 References to sources of law often refer to specific partitions of 934 the act (article, paragraph, etc.) and not to the entire document. 935 An act partition is a logical subdivision of the text, that, in a 936 structured format (as XML) fitting the document logical structure, is 937 represented by an element with its own ID; this ID aims to identify 938 the element and to locate it. In a mark-up that does not fit the 939 logical structure of the text (as HTML), generally only the starting 940 point of the partition, and not the element, is identified through a 941 label (a tag). 942 Therefore, for allowing browsers to point to a specific partition, it 943 is necessary that such partition is endowed with an unequivocal label 944 or ID within the including document and its value is the same 945 independently from the document format. 947 For enabling the construction of the partition identifier between 948 different collections of documents, specific construction rules for 949 IDs or labels SHOULD be defined and shared, within each country or 950 jurisdiction, for any document type (e.g., for legislation, the 951 paragraph 2 of the article 3 might have as label or ID the value 952 "art3;par2", similarly for case-law, paragraph 22 of the judgment in 953 Case 46/76 Bauhuis v Netherlands, might have as label or ID the value 954 "par22"). 955 Furthermore, it is useful to foresee the compatibility with 956 applications able to manage this information (e.g., returning the 957 proper element); these procedures are particularly useful in the case 958 of rather long acts, such as codes, constitutions, regulations, etc. 959 For this purpose it is necessary that the partition identifier is 960 transmitted to the servers (resolution and application) and therefore 961 it cannot be separated by the typical "#" character of URI fragment, 962 which is not transmitted to the server. 964 According to these requirements, the syntax of a reference is: 966 ::= ["~" ]? 968 (e.g., to refer to the paragraph 3 of the article 15 of the French 969 Act of 15 may 2004, n. 106, the reference is written 970 "urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-05-15;106~art15;par3"). 972 Using a different separator ("~") from the document name, the 973 partition ID is not withheld by the browser but it is transmitted to 974 the resolution process. This enables the resolver to retrieve (for 975 example, out of a database), if it is possible, only the referred 976 partition, otherwise to return the whole act. 977 Anyway, to make it effective pointing to the indicated partition 978 through a browser, the resolver SHOULD transform the partition ID of 979 each returned URL in a URI fragment; this is obtained appending to 980 URL the "#" character followed by the partition ID (in the example 981 above, the returned URL will be #art15;par3). 983 Anyway it is possible to use the general syntax (with "#"); in this 984 case only the URN document component of the reference is transmitted 985 to the resolver, therefore the whole document will be always 986 retrieved. 988 5 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment 990 5.1 Specifying the element of the URN "lex" 992 Under the "lex" namespace, each country or international organization 993 is assigned with a jurisdiction code, which characterizes the URNs of 994 the source of law of that country or jurisdiction. This code is 995 assigned according to the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 (as well as TLDN or DN for 996 the organizations) representation and it is the value of the 997 element, which preserves cross-country uniqueness 998 of the identifiers. 1000 5.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment 1002 Any country or jurisdiction, who intends to adopt this schema, 1003 identifies a Jurisdictional Registrar, an organization which shares 1004 and defines the structure of the optional part () 1005 of the name, according to the organization of the state or 1006 institution. For example, in a federal state a 1007 corresponding to the name of each member state (e.g. "br;sao.paolo", 1008 "br;minas.gerais", etc.) may be defined. 1010 The process of assigning the will be managed by each 1011 specific country or jurisdiction under the related 1012 element. 1013 In any country the Jurisdictional Registrar shares and defines the 1014 assignment of the primary elements (issuing authority and type of 1015 legal measure) of the local names considering the characteristics of 1016 its own state or institution organization. 1017 Such a Registrar SHOULD establish, according to the guidelines 1018 indicated in the current document, a uniform procedure within the 1019 country or organization to define elements, to take 1020 decisions upon normalizations and finally to solve and avoid possible 1021 name collisions as well as to maintain authoritative registries of 1022 various kinds (e.g., for authorities, types of measures, etc.). In 1023 particular, accurate point-in-time representations of the structure 1024 and naming of government entities are important to semantically-aware 1025 applications in this domain. 1026 Moreover, the Registrar shares and defines the rules to construct 1027 partition IDs for each document type. 1028 Finally, the Registrar will develop and publish the rules and the 1029 guidelines for the construction as well as the 1030 predefined values and codes. 1032 5.3 Identifier Uniqueness 1034 Identifiers in the "lex" namespace are defined through a 1035 element assigned to the sources of law of a specific 1036 country or organization, and a assigned by the issuing 1037 authority. The main elements (authority and type of measure) of the 1038 are defined by the Jurisdictional Registrar, so that it 1039 is ensured that the constructed URNs are unique. The Jurisdictional 1040 Registrar SHOULD provide clear documentation of rules by which names 1041 are to be constructed, and SHOULD update and make accessible its 1042 registries. 1044 Any issuing authority is responsible to define formal parameters to 1045 guarantee local name uniqueness by attributing, if necessary, a 1046 conventional internal number, which, combined with the other components (authority, measure and date), builds an unequivocal 1048 identifier. Uniqueness is achieved by checking against the catalogue 1049 of previously assigned names. 1051 5.4 Identifier persistence considerations 1053 The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of the 1054 institutions that assign and administer them. The goal of the "lex" 1055 namespace schema is to maintain uniqueness and persistence of all 1056 resources identified by the assigned URNs. 1058 In particular, ITTIG-CNR, as proposer, is responsible of maintaining 1059 the uniqueness of the element; given that the 1060 is assigned on the basis of the long-held ISO 3166 1061 Alpha-2 representation of the country (or the TLD name of the 1062 organization) and that the country or organization associated code is 1063 expected to continue indefinitely, the URN also persists 1064 indefinitely. 1066 The rules for the construction of the name are conceived to delegate 1067 the responsibility of their uniqueness to a set of authorities which 1068 is identified within each country or organization. 1070 Therefore, each authority is responsible for assigning URNs which 1071 have a very long life expectancy and can be expected to remain unique 1072 for the foreseeable future. Practical and political considerations, 1073 as well as diverse local forms of government organization, will 1074 result in different methods of assigning responsibility for different 1075 levels of the name. 1076 Where this cannot be accomplished by the implementation of an 1077 authoritative hierarchy, it can and SHOULD be done by creating 1078 consensus around a series of published rules for the creation and 1079 administration of names by institutions and bodies that operate by 1080 means of collaboration rather than compulsion. 1082 Issuing authorities that operate in more localized scopes, ranging 1083 from the national down to the very local, MUST equally take 1084 responsibility for the persistence of identifiers within their 1085 scope. 1087 6 Principles of the Resolution Service 1089 6.1 The General Architecture of the System 1091 The task of the resolution service is that of associating a "lex" 1092 identifier with a specific document address on the network. By 1093 contrast with systems that can be constructed around rigorous and 1094 enforceable engineering premises, such as DNS, the "lex" resolver 1095 will be expected to cope with a wide variety of "dirty" inputs, 1096 particularly those created by the automated extraction of references 1097 from incomplete or inaccurate texts. In this document, the result is 1098 a particular emphasis on a flexible and robust resolver design. 1100 The system has a distributed architecture based on two fundamental 1101 components: a chain of information in DNS (Domain Name System) and a 1102 series of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each competent 1103 within a specific domain of the namespace. 1104 Through the NAPTR records of the DNS (described in [RFC3403]), the 1105 client identifies the characteristics (protocol, port, site) of the 1106 service (e.g. according to [RFC2169]) capable of associating the 1107 relative URLs with the URN in question, thereby allowing access to 1108 the document. 1110 A resolution service can delegate the resolution and management of 1111 hierarchically-dependent portions of the name. 1112 Delegation of this responsibility will not be unreasonably withheld 1113 provided that the processes for their resolution and management are 1114 robust and are followed. 1116 For the "lex" namespace, ITTIG-CNR will maintain the root zone 1117 "lex.urn.arpa" and, in correspondence with the adhesion of a new 1118 country (e.g., "br") or organization, will update the DNS information 1119 with a new record to delegate the relative resolution. This may be 1120 obtained by a regular expression that matches the initial part of the 1121 URN (e.g., "urn:lex:br") and redirects towards the proper zone (e.g., 1122 "lex.senado.gov.br"). 1124 Likewise the institution responsible for the jurisdiction uniform 1125 names (e.g., "urn:lex:br") has the task of managing the relative root 1126 in the DNS system (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br" zone) and routing the 1127 resolution towards its resolvers on the basis of parts of the uniform 1128 names. In similar way it can delegate the resolution of 1129 country/organization sub-levels (e.g., "urn:lex:br;sao.paolo") 1130 towards the relative zone (e.g., "lex.sao-paolo.gov.br"). 1132 The resolution service is made up of two elements: a knowledge base 1133 (consisting in a catalogue or a set of transformation rules) and a 1134 software to query the knowledge base itself. 1136 6.2 Catalogues for Resolution 1138 Incompleteness and inaccuracy are rather frequent in legal citations, 1139 and incomplete or inaccurate uniform names of the referred document 1140 are thus likely to be built from textual references (this is even 1141 more frequent if they are created automatically through a specific 1142 parser). For this reason, the implementation of a catalogue, based on 1143 a relational-database, is suggested, as it will lead to a more higher 1144 flexibility in the resolution process. 1145 In addition the catalogue must manage the aliases, the various 1146 versions and languages of the same source of law as well as the 1147 related manifestations. 1149 It is suggested that each enacting authority implements its own 1150 catalogue, assigning a corresponding unambiguous uniform name to each 1151 resource. 1153 6.3 Suggested resolver behaviour 1155 First of all the resolver should separate the part corresponding to 1156 the partition ID, through the "~" separator, from the document name. 1158 So, the resolution process SHOULD implement a normalization of the 1159 uniform name to be resolved. This may involve transforming some 1160 components to the canonical form (e.g., filling out the acronyms, 1161 expanding the abbreviations, unifying the institution names, 1162 standardizing the type of measures, etc.). For this function 1163 authorities and types of measure registers are useful. 1165 The resolver SHOULD then query the catalogue searching for the URN 1166 which corresponds exactly to the given one (normalized if necessary). 1167 Since the names coming from the references may be inaccurate or 1168 incomplete, an iterative, heuristic approach (based on partial 1169 matches) is indicated. It is worth remarking that incomplete 1170 references (not including all the elements to create the canonical 1171 uniform name) are normal and natural; for a human reader, the 1172 reference would be "completed" by contextual understanding of the 1173 reference in the document in which it occurs. 1175 In this phase, the resolver should use the partition ID information 1176 to retrieve, if it is possible, only the referred partition, 1177 otherwise to return of the entire document. 1179 Lacking more specific indications, the resolver SHOULD select the 1180 best (most recent) version of the requested source of law, and 1181 provide all the manifestations with their related items. 1182 A more specific indication in the uniform name to be resolved will, 1183 of course, result in a more selective retrieval, based on any 1184 suggested expression and/or manifestations components (e.g. date, 1185 language, format, etc.). 1187 Finally, the resolver SHOULD append to URLs the "#" character 1188 followed by partition ID, transforming it in a URI fragment for 1189 browser pointing. 1191 7 Considerations 1193 7.1 Conformance with URN Syntax 1195 No special considerations. 1197 7.2 Validation mechanism 1199 The national Authority (or those it delegates) of each adhering 1200 country or organization is responsible of the definition or 1201 acceptance of the uniform name's primary elements (issuing authority 1202 and type of legal measure). 1204 7.3 Scope 1206 Global interest. 1208 7.4 Namespace Considerations 1210 In collaboration with the legislative XML community, registrants 1211 carried out a preliminary study of the URI alternatives to satisfy 1212 the key requirements. 1213 The options analysed were: a private URI scheme, URL, PURL and URN. 1214 URN was considered the most appropriate URI given the requirements 1215 analysis. 1216 Advantages we would emphasize are: 1217 - greater flexibility in building the identifier; 1218 - the capacity to represent name components that are not strictly 1219 hierarchical; 1220 - the potential for clear division of the identifier into macro 1221 parts, main elements and components, using different separators; 1222 - ease of managing optional parts of a name. 1224 7.5 Community Considerations 1226 The use of the "lex" namespace facilitates the interoperability of 1227 information systems used in the Public Administration at the national 1228 and international level. Moreover it allows the distribution of the 1229 legal information towards a federated architecture. In such an 1230 architecture, documents are directly managed by the issuing 1231 authorities, with resulting benefits in information authenticity, 1232 quality and currency. A shared identification mechanism resources 1233 guarantees that a distributed system will be as efficient and 1234 effective as a comparable centralized system. 1236 Creators of Internet content that references legal materials - 1237 including publishers operating well outside the traditional arenas of 1238 legal publishing - benefit by the registration of the namespace 1239 because facilitates the linking of legal documents, whether by manual 1240 or automated means, and reduces the cost of maintaining documents 1241 that contain such references. 1243 Any citizen or organisation with Internet web browser capability will 1244 be entitled to access the namespace and its associated application, 1245 registers, and resolution services, to facilitate document access. 1247 7.6 IANA Considerations 1249 This document includes a URN NID registration for "lex" for entry in 1250 the IANA registry of URN NIDs (see [RFC5226]), as well as the 1251 registration of the following NAPTRs record: 1253 in the URN.ARPA domain: 1254 lex IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "" urn.ittig.cnr.it. 1256 in the URN.URI.ARPA domain: 1257 lex IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "" urn.ittig.cnr.it. 1259 7.7 Security Considerations 1261 This document introduces no additional security considerations beyond 1262 those associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general. 1264 8 References 1266 8.1 Normative References 1268 [STD63] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 1269 10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003. 1271 [RFC2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 1272 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. 1274 [RFC3406] D Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. 1275 Faltstrom, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace 1276 Definition Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002. 1278 [RFC2141] R. Moats, K. R. Sollins, "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1279 1997. 1281 [RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform 1282 Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 1283 3986, January 2005. 1285 [RFC3403] M. Mealling, Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS), 1286 Part Three: The Domain Name System (DNS) Database, RFC 1287 3403, October 2002. 1289 [RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an 1290 IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, 1291 May 2008 1293 [ISO3166] ISO 3166, "Country name codes", ISO 3166-1:1997. 1295 [ISO639-1] ISO 639-1, "Codes for the representation of names of 1296 languages" - Part 1: alpha-2 code, 2003. 1298 [ISO639-2] ISO 639-2, "Codes for the representation of names of 1299 languages" - Part 2: alpha-3 code, 1999. 1301 [RFC2169] R. Daniel, "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN", 1302 RFC 2169, June 1997 1304 [RFC2045] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail 1305 Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message 1306 Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996. 1308 8.2 Informative References 1310 [SPIN] P.L. Spinosa, "The Assignment of Uniform Names to Italian 1311 Legal Documents", May, 2006 1312 http://www.nir.it/sito_area3- 1313 ap_stan_assegnazione_nomi.htm 1315 [FRAN] E. Francesconi, "Technologies for European Integration. 1316 Standards-based Interoperability of Legal Information 1317 Systems", ISBN 978-88-8398-050-3, European Press Academic 1318 Publishing, 2007. 1320 9 Acknowledgments 1322 The authors of this document wish to thank all the supporters for 1323 giving suggestions and comments. 1324 They are also grateful to the Legislative XML community for the 1325 interesting discussions on this topic and to the Working Group 1326 "Identification of the legal resources through URNs" of Italian 1327 NormeInRete project for the provided guidance [SPIN]. 1328 The authors owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Bruce, director of the 1329 Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School, for 1330 his contribution in revising this document and sharing fruitful 1331 discussions which greatly improved the final draft. The authors wish 1332 to specially thank Marc van Opijnen (Dutch Ministry of Security and 1333 Justice) for his valuable comments on URN:LEX specifications which 1334 contributed to improve the final result, as well as for the common 1335 work aimed to harmonize ECLI and URN:LEX standards. Thanks also to 1336 Joao Alberto de Oliveira Lima, legislative system analyst of the 1337 Brazilian Federal Senate, and to Attila Torcsvari, information 1338 management consultant, for their detailed comments on the first 1339 drafts of this document, which provided significant hints to the 1340 final version of the standard, and to Robert Richards of the Legal 1341 Information Institute (Cornell University Law School), promoter and 1342 maintainer of the Legal Informatics Research social network, as well 1343 as to the members of this network, for their valuable comments on 1344 this proposal. 1345 Finally, many thanks go to Loriana Serrotti who significantly 1346 contributed to the first drafting of this document. 1348 10 Author's Addresses 1349 PierLuigi Spinosa, Enrico Francesconi 1350 Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG) 1351 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) 1352 Via de' Barucci, 20 1353 50127 Firenze 1354 Italy 1355 Telephone: +39 055 43995 1356 e-mail: {pierluigi.spinosa, enrico.francesconi}@ittig.cnr.it 1358 Caterina Lupo 1359 (ICT consultant) 1360 Via San Fabiano, 25 1361 00165 Roma 1362 Telephone: +39 3382632348 1363 e-mail: caterina.lupo@gmail.com 1365 Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of the "lex" 1366 namespace 1368 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1369 * General Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) 1370 * NID = namespace 1371 * NSS = specific name 1372 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1373 ::= "urn:"":" 1375 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1376 * Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) of the "lex" namespace 1377 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1378 ::= "lex" 1380 ::= "urn:lex:" 1382 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1383 * Structure of a "lex" specific name 1384 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1385 ::= ":" 1387 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1388 * Structure of the element 1389 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1390 ::= [";"]* 1392 ::= {2,4} | ([]*) 1394 ::= []* 1396 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1397 * Structure of the element 1398 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1399 ::= ["@"]?["$"]? 1401 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1402 * Structure of the element 1403 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1404 ::= ":"":"
[":"]* 1406 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1407 * Structure of the element 1408 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1409 ::= ["+"]* 1411 ::= ([";"]*[";"]*) | 1412 ::= []* 1414 ::= []* 1416 ::= []* 1418 ::= []* 1420 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1421 * Structure of the element 1422 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1423 ::= [";"]* 1425 ::= []* 1427 ::= []* 1429 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1430 * Structure of the
element 1431 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1432
::= (|)";" 1434 ::= [","]* 1436 ::= []* 1438 ::= ([","]*)| 1440 ::= [|]* 1442 ::= "lex-"+ 1444 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1445 * Structure of the element 1446 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1447 ::= [";"]* 1449 ::= []* 1451 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1452 * Structure of the element 1453 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1455 ::= [":"]? 1457 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1458 * Structure of the element 1459 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1460 ::= (|) 1461 [";"(|)]* 1463 ::= 1465 ::= 1467 ::= []* 1469 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1470 * Structure of the element 1471 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1473 ::= {2,3} 1475 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1476 * Structure of the element 1477 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1478 ::= [";""]* 1479 ":"[";""]* 1480 [":"[";"]*]? 1481 [":"[";"]*]? 1483 ::= [|"-"]* 1485 ::= [|"-"]* 1487 ::= [|"-"]* 1489 ::= [|"-"]* 1491 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1492 * Structure of the date 1493 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1494 ::= "-""-" 1496 ::= {4} 1497 ::= {2} 1498 ::= {2} 1500 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1501 * Allowed characters 1502 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1503 ::= | | | 1505 ::= | "." 1507 ::= | | 1508 ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" | 1509 "i" | "j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" | 1510 "q" | "r" | "s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" | 1511 "y" | "z" 1513 ::= "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | 1514 "8" | "9" 1516 ::= ("%" ( | )){1,6} 1518 ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" 1520 ::= "-" | "_" | "'" | "=" | "(" | ")" 1522 ::= ":" | "@" | "$" | "+" | ";" | "," | "~" 1524 ::= "*" | "!" 1526 Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level 1528 B1 The element 1530 B1.1 Indication of the Authority 1532 The element of a uniform name may indicate, in the 1533 various cases: 1534 - the actual authority issuing the legal provision. More 1535 specifically, the authority adopting the provision or enacting it; 1536 - the institution where the provision is registered, known and 1537 referenced to, even if produced by others (e.g., the bills 1538 identified through the reference to the Chamber where they are 1539 presented); 1540 - the institution regulated (and referred to in citations) by the 1541 legal provision even when this is issued by another authority 1542 (e.g., the statute of a Body); 1543 - the entity that proposed the legal material not yet included in the 1544 institutional process (e.g. a proposed bill written by a a 1545 political party). 1547 B1.2 Multiple Issuers 1549 Some sources of law are enacted by a number of issuing parties (e.g., 1550 inter-ministerial decrees, agreements, etc.). In this case, the 1551 element contains all the issuing parties (properly 1552 separated), as follows: 1554 ::= ["+"]* 1556 (e.g., "ministry.justice+ministry.finances") 1558 B1.3 Indication of the Issuer 1560 Each issuing authority is essentially represented by either an 1561 institutional office (e.g., Prime Minister) or an institution (e.g., 1562 Ministry); in the last case, the authority is indicated in accordance 1563 with the institution's hierarchical structure, from the more general 1564 to more specific (Council, Department, etc.), ending with the 1565 relative office (President, Director, etc.). 1566 Therefore, the structure of the issuer is as follows: 1568 ::= ([";"]*[";"]*) | 1570 (e.g., "ministry.finances;department.revenues;manager") 1572 B1.4 Indication of the Body 1573 Depending on the kind of measure, the body within the issuing 1574 authority is unambiguously determined (e.g., the Council for Regional 1575 Acts) and normally it is not indicated in the references. 1576 Just like in practice, the indication of the enacting authority is 1577 limited to the minimum in relation to the type of measure. 1578 (e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany;council:act") 1580 B1.5 Indication of the Function 1582 Generally, the component is indicated, sometimes instead 1583 of the body itself: 1584 - in case of political, representative or elective offices 1585 (e.g., "university.oxford;rector:decree" instead of 1586 "university.oxford;rectorship:decree"); 1587 - when it refers to a top officer in the institution (e.g., general 1588 manager, general secretary, etc.) which is not always possible to 1589 associate a specific internal institutional structure to 1590 (e.g., "national.council.research;general.manager"). 1592 It is not indicated when it clearly corresponds to the person in 1593 charge of an institution (typically, a general director); in this 1594 case, only the structure and not the person in charge is indicated 1595 (e.g., "ministry.justice;department.penitentiary.administration"). 1597 The function MUST be indicated when: 1598 - it is not the same of the director or the person in charge of the 1599 structure (for example, in case of an undersecretary, a deputy 1600 director, etc.); 1601 - the type of measure may be both monocratic or collegial: the 1602 indication of the office eliminates the ambiguity. 1604 B1.6 Conventions for the Authority 1606 Acts and measures bearing the same relevance as an act, issued or 1607 enacted since the foundation of the State, have conventionally 1608 indicated "state" (expressed in each country official language) as 1609 authority; the same convention is used for constitutions, codes 1610 (civil, criminal, civil procedure, criminal procedure, etc) and 1611 international treaties. 1613 B2 The element 1615 B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure 1617 In uniform names the issuing authority of a document is mandatory. 1618 This makes unnecessary to indicate any further qualification of the 1619 measure (e.g., ministerial decree, directorial ordinance, etc.), even 1620 if it is widely used. 1622 When the authority-measure combination clearly identifies a specific 1623 document, the type of measure is not defined through attributes 1624 referring to the enacting authority. 1625 (e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany:regional.act") 1627 B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure 1629 In the element, it is usually sufficient to indicate the 1630 type of a measure. As usual, references to sources of law, rather 1631 than through the formal details (date and number), may be made 1632 through some of their characteristics such as the subject-matter 1633 covered (e.g., accounting regulations), nicknames referring to the 1634 promoter (e.g., Bassanini Act) or to the topic of the act (e.g., 1635 Bankruptcy Law), etc.. 1636 In these cases, the type of measure MAY be followed by further 1637 specifications useful in referencing even if the details are lacking: 1639 ::=[";"]* 1641 (e.g., "regulations;accounting" or "act;bankruptcy") 1643 B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative References 1645 There are legislative measures that, although unique, are usually 1646 cited in different ways, for example through the legislative act 1647 introducing them into the legal order (President's decree, 1648 legislative decree, etc.) or through their legislative category 1649 (regulations, consolidation, etc.). 1650 In order to ensure, in all the cases, the validity of the references, 1651 an alias that takes into account the measure category is associated 1652 to the uniform name, representing the legislative form. 1653 (e.g., "state:decree.legislative:1992-07-24;358" and 1654 "state:consolidation;public.contracts:1992-07-24;358"). 1656 B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases 1658 The sources of law including different normative references are 1659 usually introduced in legislation through the adoption or the issuing 1660 of an act, which they are either included or attached to. It is, 1661 therefore, necessary to create an alias linking the two aspects of 1662 the same document. Specifically, the different measures can be: 1663 - adopted/issued by an authority different from the one regulated by 1664 the provision (e.g., the statute of a Body); in this case, the 1665 correlation is established between two uniform names each featuring 1666 a completely different element 1667 (e.g., "italian.society.authors.publishers:statute" and 1668 "ministry.cultural.activities+ministry.finances.budget.economic. 1669 planning:decree"); 1671 - issued by the institution itself either because it has issuing 1672 authority or by virtue of a proxy (e.g., a provision that refers to 1673 the functioning of the Body itself); in this case, the two aliases 1674 share the first part of the authority; 1675 (e.g., "municipality.firenze:statute" and 1676 "municipality.firenze;council:deliberation"); 1677 - issued by the same Body to regulate a particular sector of its own 1678 competence; in this case the element is the same 1679 (e.g., "ministry.justice:regulation;use.information.tools. 1680 telematic.process" and "ministry.justice:decree"). 1682 B3 The
element 1684 B3.1 Indication of the Details 1686 The details of a source of law usually include the date of the 1687 enactment and the identification number (inclusion in the body of 1688 laws, register, protocol, etc.). 1689 Some measures can have multiple dates; there are also cases in which 1690 the number of the measure does not exist (unnumbered measures) or a 1691 measure has multiple numbers (e.g., unified cases). For these 1692 reasons, the set up of both elements (date and number) includes 1693 multiple values. 1695 Some institutions (e.g., the Parliaments) usually identify documents 1696 through their period of reference (e.g., the legislature number) 1697 rather than through a date, which would be much less meaningful and 1698 never used in references (e.g., Senate bill S.2544 of the XIV 1699 legislature). In these cases, the component is used in 1700 substitution of the component . 1702 Usually details of a measure are not reported according to a specific 1703 sequence; in accordance with the global structure of the uniform 1704 name, which goes from the general to the specific, the sequence date- 1705 number has the following form: 1707
::=(|)";" 1709 (e.g., "2000-12-06;126", "14.legislature;s.2544") 1711 B3.2 Multiple Dates 1713 Some sources of law, even if unique, are identified by more than one 1714 date; in this case, in the field all the given dates are to 1715 be reported and indicated as follows: 1717 ::=[","]* 1719 (e.g., the measure of the Data Protection Authority of December 30, 1720 1999- January 13, 2000, No. 1/P/2000 has the following uniform name: 1721 "personal.data.protection.authority:measure:1999-12-30,2000-01-13; 1722 1-p-2000"). 1724 B3.3 Unnumbered Measures 1726 Measures not officially numbered in the publications may have a non- 1727 unequivolcal identifier, because several measures of the same type 1728 can exist, issued on the same day by the same authority. 1729 To ensure that the uniform name is unambiguous, the field 1730 MUST, in any case, contain a discriminating element, which can be any 1731 identifier used internally, and not published, by the authority 1732 (e.g., protocol). 1733 If the authority does not have its own identifier, one identifier 1734 MUST be created for the name system. In order to easily differentiate 1735 it, such number is preceded by the string "lex-": 1737 ::="lex-"[]+ 1739 (e.g., "ministry.finances:decree:1999-12-20;lex-3") 1741 It is responsibility of the authority issuing a document to assign a 1742 discriminating specification to it; in case of multiple authorities, 1743 only one of them is responsible for the assignment of the number to 1744 the document (e.g., the proponent). 1745 The unnumbered measures published on an official publication (e.g., 1746 the Official Gazette), instead of by a progressive number are 1747 recognized by the univocal identifying label printed on the paper. 1748 Such an identifier, even if unofficial but assigned to a document in 1749 an official publication, is to be preferred because it has the clear 1750 advantage to be public and therefore easier to be found. 1752 B3.4 Multiple Numbers 1754 Some legal documents (e.g., bills), even if unique, are identified by 1755 a set of numbers (e.g., the unification of cases or bills). 1756 In this case, in the field, all the identifiers are 1757 reported, according to the following structure: 1759 ::=[","]* 1761 (e.g., "2000-06-12;c-10-97,c-11-97,c-12-97") 1762 The characters which are not allowed (e.g., "/") or reserved (e.g., 1763 ":"), including the comma, cannot exist inside the , and 1764 therefore MUST be turned into "-". 1765 This conversion may imply that the uniform name of the document is no 1766 more unique (e.g., removal 123-BIS and return 123/BIS of the bill 123 1767 both are identified as "123-bis"); in this case, it is necessary to 1768 add a specific distinctive ending (e.g., "123-bis-removal" and "123- 1769 bis-return"). 1771 B4 The element 1773 B4.1 Formal Annexes 1775 Although annexes are an integral part of the legal document, they may 1776 be referred to and undergo amendments separately from the act to 1777 which they are annexed. It is, therefore, necessary that both the 1778 main document as well as each formal individual annex is univocally 1779 identified. 1781 Formal annexes may be registered as separate parts or together with a 1782 legal provision; they may also be autonomous in nature or not. In any 1783 case, they MUST be given a uniform name, which includes the uniform 1784 name of the source of law to which they are attached, and a suffix 1785 which identifies the annex itself. 1787 The suffix of formal annexes includes the official heading of the 1788 annex and, possibly, further specifications (e.g., the title) which 1789 will facilitate the retrieval of the annex in case the identifier is 1790 missing: 1792 ::=[";"]* 1794 (e.g., "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a; 1795 borders.park") 1797 The characters which are not allowed (e.g. "/") or which are reserved 1798 (e.g. ":") must not be featured in the and therefore MUST 1799 be turned into ".". 1801 B4.2 Annexes of Annexes 1803 When there are annexes to an annex, their corresponding identifiers 1804 are created by adding to the identifier of the original annex those 1805 of the annexes that are connected with it (that is, attached to it). 1807 (e.g., Table 1 attached to Attachment A of the preceding legal act 1808 has the following uniform name: 1809 "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a; 1810 borders.park:table.1;municipality.territories"). 1812 Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the Element of the 1813 Expression 1815 C1 The element 1817 C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document 1819 The creation of an updated text of a document may have one of the 1820 following forms: 1821 - "multi-version": when specific mark-ups which identify the modified 1822 parts of a document (added, substituted or deleted parts) and their 1823 related periods of effectiveness are indicated inside one single 1824 object (e.g., an xml file). Such a document will be able, in a 1825 dynamic way, to appear in different forms according to the 1826 requested date of effectiveness; 1827 - "single-version": when, on the contrary, a new and distinct object 1828 is created for each amendment to the text at a given time. Each 1829 object is, therefore, characterized by its own period of validity. 1830 In any case all the versions SHOULD be linked one another and 1831 immediately navigable. 1833 C1.2 Identification of the Version 1835 In order to identify the different time versions of the same act, to 1836 the uniform name of the original document has to be added a specific 1837 suffix. 1838 Such a suffix identifies each version of a legal provision and 1839 includes, first and foremost, one of the following elements: 1840 - the issuing date of the last amending measure taken into account; 1841 - the date in which the communication of the rectification or of the 1842 errata corrige, is published; 1843 - a specification which must identify the reason concerning the 1844 amendment (e.g., the specific phase of the legislative process), 1845 for the cases in which the date is not usually used (e.g., bills). 1847 Anyway it is possible to add further specifications that will 1848 distinguish each of the different versions of the text to guarantee 1849 identifier unequivocalness. For example with regard to changes of the 1850 in-force or effectiveness of any partition or portion of the text 1851 itself (e.g., when the amendments introduced by an act are applied at 1852 different times) or different events occurring in the same date. 1854 ::=(|) 1855 [";"(|)]* 1857 where: 1858 - contains the issuing date of the last considered 1859 amendment or of the last communication of amendment. In case the 1860 original text introduces differentiated periods in which an act is 1861 effective and the information system produces one version for each 1862 of them, such element contains the string "original"; 1863 - any information useful to identify unambiguously 1864 and univocally the version; 1865 - contains the date in which a version is put into 1866 force, is effective or is published; 1867 - is a name assigned to the event producing a further version 1868 (e.g., amendment, decision, etc.). 1870 The issuing date of an amending act was chosen as identifier of a 1871 version because it can be obtained from the heading (formal data). 1873 (e.g., the name "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19" 1874 identifies the updated text of the "Royal Decree of 30/1/1941, No. 1875 12" with the amendments introduced by the "Law Decree of 19/2/1998, 1876 No. 51", without any indication of its actual entry into force. The 1877 same uniform name with the additional ending ";1999-01-01" indicates 1878 the in-force or effective version starting in a different date (from 1879 1/1/99). 1881 For a full compatibility, every updating of a text or of the 1882 effectiveness of a "multi-version" document implies the creation of a 1883 new uniform name, even if the object remains only one, containing the 1884 identifier of the virtually generated version, exactly as in the case 1885 of a "single-version" document. A specific meta-data will associate 1886 every uniform name with the period of time during which such a name 1887 together with its corresponding text is to be considered valid. 1889 (e.g., the multi-version document containing the "R.D. of 01/30/1941, 1890 no. 12", updated by the amendments introduced by the "D.Lgs. of 1891 02/19/1998, no. 51", contains the name of the original 1892 "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12" as well as the name of the updated 1893 version "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19"). 1895 Please note that in case of attachments or annexes, the creation of a 1896 new version (even in the case of only one component) would imply the 1897 creation of a new uniform name for all the connected objects in order 1898 to guarantee their alignment (i.e., the main document, the 1899 attachments and annexes).