Mark Oehlert writes, "Welcome to the world of HANDLES and DOIs and DSpace and CORDRA. Don't know what they are? Think super-persistent URLs..also think those things which will enable those repositories of learning objects that is the goal of many to actually exist." No no no no no. This is what you'll get with DOIs (it's supposed to be Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (2006): 37--70). Persistence is the claim that is being made for them - but there is nothing more intrinsically persistent about a DOI than a URL. Servers already support a 'mod rewrite' function, which means that any given URL can point to an object anywhere in the world. And for those who don't have that, there is Purl and many similar services. So why DOI and the rest? To replace the http:// protocol. And why do that? To build access control into the fabric of the web. Why? Because the U.S. military wants it, that's why. DOI and CORDRA are not designed to give us repositories - we already have those. They are designed to eliminate open access.
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