Pysy
Permanent addresses for published documents. A document published through Pysy answers at the same address, unchanged, for the whole of its retention period -- and when something replaces it, the page says so rather than quietly becoming something else.
The problem
An address printed on paper cannot be corrected. A QR code on a package, a reference in a contract, a citation in a report, a link in a decision that took effect years ago: each is a promise that one particular address will still answer long after the print run. Ordinary publishing systems are built for the opposite. Pages get edited, moved, consolidated, tidied away in a redesign. None of that is negligence -- it is what a content management system is for.
The documents that need the opposite have a shape in common. They are finished when they are published, somebody else relies on them, and what matters is what they said on a particular day:
- terms, tariffs and price lists, as they stood when a customer agreed to them;
- certificates, inspection and test reports, cited by number for as long as the thing they certify is in service;
- technical and safety documentation tied to a model or a batch, reached from a label or a nameplate;
- statutory and regulatory publications, where how long they stay reachable is set by law rather than by preference;
- anything a printed QR code points at, because the print run is the part that cannot be reissued.
Sometimes the promise carries a number and a deadline. Regulation (EU) 2024/900, to take one example, requires a transparency notice for a political advertisement to stay reachable for seven years after the advertisement last ran (Art 12(4)). Pysy is not specific to that rule or to that industry; a retention period is a value the publisher sets per document.
What Pysy does
An address that does not move
A document gets one address and keeps it. The identifier is uppercase and carries no file extension, so it encodes compactly in a QR code and can be typed off a printed page or read aloud without guessing at case. It is never reassigned to anything else, ever.
Content that cannot be changed afterwards
Once a document is published its content is never edited -- not by the publisher, not by us. A correction is a new document, and the old one stays readable and points at what replaced it. Somebody who follows the printed address sees both what they were sent to and what superseded it, which is strictly more than a silent edit would have given them.
A page for people, a record for machines
Every document answers as a page for a reader and, at the same address with
.json appended, as a structured record carrying a checksum of the
content. One address, two formats, and no separate machine endpoint that can
drift out of step with the human one.
It says what happened
Replaced, withdrawn by the publisher, or past the end of its retention: the page says which, in plain words. The alternative -- a bare 404 -- leaves a reader unable to tell whether the document is gone, whether they mistyped it, or whether it never existed.
Retention that ends on purpose
Each document carries the moment its retention ends, fixed when it is published and within the limit the publisher's contract sets. After that the content goes. The publisher decides in advance which way the address then behaves: explain that the retention ended, or stop answering.
The publisher's name around it, not ours
Each publishing unit has its own frame -- the name it publishes under and a current contact channel -- shown around every one of its documents. A reader can always see who published the thing and how to reach them. The contact channel is the current one, not the one that was current when the document was published.
Publishing is one API call
A document is created by the publisher's own system, with a credential issued per publishing unit. Pysy stores what it is handed and does not rewrite it.
What Pysy is not
- Not a content management system. No drafts, no editing, no workflow. A document arrives finished.
- Not a web archive. It keeps what its customers publish through it, not what is published elsewhere.
- Not a validator of your format. A customer's own document format is the customer's. Pysy stores it and asserts nothing about what it means.
- Not carrying anything of ours. No advertising, no tracking, no analytics and no cookies on a document page.
Where the data lives
All services run in Europe and all data is stored in European servers, on European infrastructure, by a Finnish company.
Availability
Pysy is opening for its first customers. If a permanent address is a problem you have, write to info@mikkokoivunalho.fi and say what you would publish and how long it has to keep answering.
Its first customer is our own other product: Polmai publishes its transparency notices through Pysy. Two separate products, one buying from the other, which is also the honest test of whether the thing works.
Nothing on this site is legal advice. Where a claim rests on Regulation (EU) 2024/900, the article is cited so you can read it yourself.