  To make digital resources on the web verifiable, immutable, and permanent, we
propose a technique to include cryptographic hash values in URIs. We call them
trusty URIs and we show how they can be used for approaches like
nanopublications to make not only specific resources but their entire reference
trees verifiable. Digital artifacts can be identified not only on the byte
level but on more abstract levels such as RDF graphs, which means that
resources keep their hash values even when presented in a different format. Our
approach sticks to the core principles of the web, namely openness and
decentralized architecture, is fully compatible with existing standards and
protocols, and can therefore be used right away. Evaluation of our reference
implementations shows that these desired properties are indeed accomplished by
our approach, and that it remains practical even for very large files.
