[1] The goal of XRI was a standard syntax and discovery format for abstract, structured identifiers that are domain-, location-, application-, and transport-independent, so they can be shared across any number of domains, directories, and interaction protocols.
[4] The core of the dispute is whether the widely interoperable HTTP URIs are capable of fulfilling the role of abstract, structured identifiers, as the TAG believes,[5] but whose limitations the XRI Technical Committee was formed specifically to address.
[6] The designers of XRI believed that, due to the growth of XML, web services, and other ways of adapting the Web to automated, machine-to-machine communications, it was increasingly important to be able to identify a resource independent of any specific physical network path, location, or protocol in order to: This work led, by early 2003, to the publication of a protocol based on HTTP(S) and simple XML documents called XRDS (Extensible Resource Descriptor Sequence).
Further parameters to specify the resolution can be appended to the HXRI, e.g. to get the whole XRDS document or to get service descriptions for this XRI.
HTTP URI syntax does not provide a standard way to express the URN for the book title in the context of the DNS name for the library branch.
Opposition from VeriSign and companies that had connections to Hallam-Baker was instrumental in ensuring the defeat of the proposal to adopt the specifications.