Extension and Internationalisation of Italian URNs Scheme PierLuigi Spinosa Institute of Legal Infor

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Extension and Internationalisation of Italian
URNs Scheme PierLuigi SpinosaInstitute of
Legal Information Theory and TechniquesItalian
National Research Council (ITTIG / CNR -
Florence) pierluigi.spinosa_at_ittig.cnr.it

• Workshop on Legal XML
• Furore, 6-8 April 2005

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Extension of Italian URNs Scheme
Synthesis of version 1.1 of URNs scheme ltnamegt
ltmain-docgt ltannexgt? _at_ ltversiongt? ltmain-docgt
ltauthoritygt ltmeasuregt ltdetailsgt During
the application on the field of the scheme, the
following management improvements proved
necessary - annexes of annexes - multiple
versions generated from the same amendment act -
communications (errata corrige, rectification,
etc.) - fragments in the resolution process -
property of the referred document (i.e. in-force
date)
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Version 1.2 Solutions
1. Annexes of annexes (i.e. an annexed table
to regulations annexed to a decree) The
ltannexgt element becomes repeatable more
times ltmain-docgt ltannexgt? ltannexgt?
... i.e. urnnirstatolegge2004-07-12123alleg
ato.atabella.1
main document
annex A
annex1
3
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Version 1.2 Solutions
2. Multiple versions generated from the same
amendment act A specification is added
to the ltversiongt element to assure the univocity
of the uniform name ltversiongt
ltmeasure-dategt ltin-force-dategt? i.e. original
urnnirstatolegge2000-07-12123
version 1 urnnirstatolegge2000-07-12123_at_2002
-10-202003-01-01 version 2
urnnirstatolegge2000-07-12123_at_2002-10-202003
-06-01
urn-0
urn-1
urn-2
Amendment text(date-m) - amendment-1
(in-force at date-1) - amendment-2 (in-force
at date-2)
original document
version 1
version 2
amendmentact
date-1
date-2
date-m
version-1
original version
version-2
t
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Version 1.2 Solutions
3. Communications related to normative measures
(errata corrige, rectification, notice,
etc.) - are not normative measures - produce
effects on normative measures (in-force text,
date, etc.) The communications URNs are not
independent but built from the URN of the related
normative measures - in the resolution process
it helps to easily link the related
communications to any version of a measure As a
chain of communications is possible, a repeatable
ltnoticegt element is added to the scheme ltnamegt
ltrelated-docgt ltnoticegt? ltnoticegt?
... ltnoticegt lttypegt ltdategt i.e. act
urnnirstatolegge2004-07-12123
commun. urnnirstatolegge2004-07-12123errat
a.corrige2004-07-14
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Documents and References

• - the scheme defines the uniform names of entire
  documents
• many references are related to specific
  partitions- references are generally dynamic
  they are related to the
• today in-force version of the document (by
  the moment
• in which the navigation is performed)
• some other references can be static they are
  related to
• a specific version of the document
• - a reference nature is established in the source
  document by a legal expert

to represent these characteristics, references
need a wider space of names than the one used for
the act identification

• to maintain reference updated, the link to the
  current version
• can be performed only by the resolution process
• - a name of extended space can be interpreted by
  the resolver to provide the right version /
  partition

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Basic and Extended Space
Two spaces of names are proposed - basic space
set of names to identify documents - extended
space set of names only for references
y
basic
doc.
ref.
x
extended
Relationships gt a document identifier belongs
only to basic space gt a name used in references
can belong either to basic or extended set gt
any name into extended space is linked to another
one within the basic space
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Extended Names for References
Proposal of version 1.3 of URNs
scheme ltref-namegt ltdoc-namegt
ltpartition-idgt? ! ltpropertygt? ltpropertygt
vigltdategt effltdategt ... i.e. referring
to the version in-force at 1-1-2003 of 3rd
paragraph of the 2nd article of the act n.
23 of 9-7-2000, the name to use is
urnnirstatolegge2000-07-0923art2-com3!vig20
03-01-01 gt reference name belongs to extended
space if partition identifier or property is
specified gt partition identifier is no longer a
URI fragment (), thus it is transmitted from
browser to resolution process gt document
property (text in-force or effective at a certain
date, etc.) can be requested to the resolver
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Resolvers Typology in Transitory Time
1. Basic resolvers - are able to resolve only
names of basic space gt ignore document
property gt extract basic name and resolve it
(URN to URLs) gt attach partition-id to URLs as
fragment ( to ) for internal link gt redirect
the client to completed URLs i.e. for
urnnirstatolegge2000-07-0923art2-com3!vig20
03-01-01 they redirect to URLs(urnnirstato
legge2000-07-0923)art2-com3 2. Extended
resolvers - are able to resolve names of
extended space gt may return URLs of specific
partitions (i.e. via DB query) gt may process
metadata and return URLs related to the
version requested gt both resolvers must show the
URN part that has been resolved gt
documents must show their own properties
(in-force interval, ...) must permit
navigation trough the versions (for / back-ward)
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Scheme Internationalisation
1. Reasons and advantages - several countries
intend to adopt a URN scheme for legal
documents gt with a structure similar to the
italian one gt with the necessary
adjustments - an international (at least in
Europe) common scheme facilitates gt
cross-countries references gt creation of
cross-countries services (i.e. CaseLex) gt
interchange of experiences and tools
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Proposal for the International Scheme

• Structure
• urn ltmeta-spacegt ltcounty-codegt
  ltnational-namegt
• where
• - ltmeta-spacegt is a common meta namespace for
  legal documents (the
  proposed name is lex)
• - ltcountry-codegt is the ISO 3166 3-letters code
  ita, fra, dnk,
  etc.
• ltnational-namegt is the uniform name of a legal
  act in a certain
  country
• (authority, act, details, annex,
  version, etc.)
• i.e. urnlexespestadoley2002-07-12123
• urnlexitastatolegge2003-09-21456
• urnlexfraetatlois2004-12-06321

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Architecture of Distributed Resolution System
naptr rec.
dns
urnlexitastatolegge199935
lex
(lex.urn.arpa)
ita
url of resolution service
url(service)?urnlexitastatolegge199935
stato
fra
regione
resol.
catalogue
url-1(statolegge199935) url-2(statolegge1999
35)
site
text of legge n. 35/1999
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Notes about URN
1. Browser Plug-in - browsers do not generally
accept urn scheme yet - for Mozilla and
FireFox browsers a plug-in has been developed
gt technology XUL (xml user interface language)
gt name URN Support 1.0.2004110501 gt author
SHIMODA Hiroshi gt http//www.extensionsmirror.nl
/lofiversion/index.php/t952.html 2. Namespaces
registration - the NiR Standardisation Workgroup
aims at registering (by CNIPA) nir and lex
namespaces at IANA - for the above browsers it
will be no longer necessary the transformation
of urn-links in http scheme
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One Final Question
How can we overcome the language barriers? It is
very difficult for a publisher to know the
equivalent terms in a different language to build
the correct URN. Possible solutions 1. to use
a bridge common language (english, latin,
esperanto, ...) gt a centralised or
distributed service would be able to map a
URN from the common language to the destination
one i.e. lexitastateact... gt
lexitastatolegge... 2. to use directly
any language included in EuroWordNet (a
standard cross-languages international lexicon)
gt a centralised service would be able to map a
URN from the native language to the
destination one i.e. lexitaestadoley...
gt lexitastatolegge...
lexitaetatlois... gt lexitastatolegge
gt URNs lexicon is very limited the mapping
seems not too difficult to realise
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