discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Aaron Swartz <me AT aaronsw.com>]

[oops, meant to reply to all. Shelley, mind forwarding your reply to 
the list too?]
Original-Date: Wed Dec 25, 2002  10:37:58  PM America/Chicago

Shelley Powers wrote:
> I'm not sure why adding the extra structure [in dc:rights and 
> dc:creator] clarifies any confusion. In the example you mention a 
> copyright name holder and a date, but dc:rights can be a name, and 
> dc:date is the date -- is it just the ability to add a URI that 
> enhances the structure?

dc:creator is defined as "An entity primarily responsible for making 
the content  of the resource." not "The name of an entity [...]". It's 
important not to confuse things with their names.

A similar argument can be made for dc:rights.

> Second, what kind of mods can we make to the RDF/XML and still not 
> validate
> the 'license'?

Do you mean invalidate?

> In other words, how much of the license is dependent on the RDF? We 
> can tweak the RDF/XML and still get the same model, but how much of 
> this is dependent. For instance, could I use dc:rights as its used 
> elsewhere?

What do you mean by dependent? The RDF is just a machine-readable 
version of what's in the HTML: "This work is under the X license, 
created by Y, etc."

To bind the license to the work, I think only the cc:license is 
necessary, but I'm not sure whether a court would hold the RDF to be 
legally binding.

> Third, are you all going to be adding comments to the schema for 
> something
> like Brownsauce?

Hm, I haven't played with BrownSauce yet. If you can tell me what the 
necessary comments are, I'd be happy to add them.

> The only prohibition so far is commercial use. Can we modify 
> prohibition to
> add our own?

You can create your own thins with rdf:type cc:Prohibition. Is that 
what you mean?

> We can't modify the 'license', because that's static at CC. And
> I know we can alter the surrounding text for the RDF/XML in the pages,
> finetune what the data is connected to. But what can we do with the 
> data
> contained in the RDF/XML without it voiding the license?

You can obviously say more things about the license, but if they are 
inaccurate, it may call the binding of the license into question in 
court, just as you would if you say "this song is public domain but you 
must get my permission before performing for money".
--
Aaron Swartz [http://www.aaronsw.com] Creative Commons Metadata Lead