On ID "sameness"

[Ray Plante]

Hi Arnold,

Thanks for your comments.  I recognize that sameness will depend on (1) 
the type of object be identified, and (2) the needs of a particular 
application.  My answer to this was that (1) it would be up to the 
curator to decide when two things are the same apart from its location, 
and (2) standard interfaces should be specific about what kind of ID 
should be given/returned.  

So, my question now is, what would suggest as an answer to how we use IDs?  
Should we:
  A.  Drop the concept of IDs altogether?
  B.  Restrict IDs to refering to explicitly registered descriptions? 
	(Some other mechanism would be necessary for identifying different 
         formats of the same image in the SIA image query results.)
  C.  Go with a variation on the requirements and guidelines on "sameness" 
        that I suggested?
  D.  Something else entirely?

cheers,
Ray