URN , or Uniform Resource Name , is an IETF RFC specifies a syntax for URIs that server as persistent location-independent resource identifiers .
A URN is a URI which names a resource. URLs , in contrast , describe the location of a resource . RFC 2141 has the URN of urn:ietf:RFC:2141 , and the URL http://www.ietf.org/rfc2141.txt .
Given the serverity of this situation, I wonder why URNs have never caught on?