<p><pre><code>  What if URLs were immutable? 
  What if once content was posted to a URL (maybe a new kind of URL, the immutable IURL) 
  it could never be changed? 
  The contents of the site and the URL itself 
  would be hashed together 
  and out would come a key that could never be altered. 
  Not even the theme and styling of the page could be rebranded. 
  It would be frozen like Han Solo at the end of Empire Strikes Back
</code></pre>
An interesting concept, and I think fatally flawed. There is a simple question of plumbing. Who&#x27;d pay for the kind of infrastructure required to make that happen? How would it be backward compatible with existing URLs?<p>Far more important would be issues of identity and freedom. They are related to Facebook&#x27;s awkward handling of gender and name identities. What if you posted something embarrassing, libelous, or injurious to your professional career?<p>What if you became a &quot;new person&quot; through a religious transformation, witness protection, or some other kind of powerful ideological repositioning (think conversion to or from ISIS, for example)?<p>What if you want to become anonymous, or link yourself to a formerly anonymous publication after the fact?<p>It seems to me that freedom consists not just of being how you wish to be defined, but control over how you wish to be undefined.