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cc-metadata - Re: How about a META tag?

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Subject: discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

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  • From: Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: cc-metadata AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: How about a META tag?
  • Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 11:13:28 -0800

Cory Nelson wrote:
I propose sites under a CC license include a meta tag in their header saying
so. Though this won't help people recognize the content as being under a CC
license, it could help search engines greatly.

Here is an example:

<meta name="license"
content="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/"; />

What do you guys think?

It would help search engines a little bit -- looking for a meta tag is slightly easier than looking for embedded RDF, though the latter is not at all difficult, as demonstrated by Nathan Yergler's ccValidator and mozCC (see <http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/3922> for links).

However, HTML META has at least three disadvantages, from least to most important:

* None of the existing ~1 million pages with a CC license use that format. (I don't consider that a huge disadvantage, as the current set of CC licensed content will be a tiny fraction of the set that will exist in say another year, if we're at all successful.)

* RDF is far more expressive. For example, without introducing secondary encoding for HTML META keys or values, you couldn't add metadata concerning anything other than the current document.

* Requiring metadata placed in the HEAD of an HTML page will dramatically decrease metadata adoption. The only reason so much CC metadata is out there now is that including it is a zero-cost operation. When the user selects a license and copies&pastes the HTML with a license statement and button into their web page, they get the embedded RDF without having to know anything about it. Getting people to take extra steps to include or produce metadata is very hard, perhaps futile. I tend to believe that good metadata must either be a side effect of some other process (e.g., selecting a license) or a collaborative effort by an interested community (e.g., Amazon book reviews, Bitzi, DMoz, MusicBrainz) (leaving out the case of $$$ for knowledge workers).

However, I welcome further ideas and discussion...

Thanks,
Mike

p.s. You should consider adding support for <http://backend.userland.com/creativeCommonsRssModule> to your C# RSS 2.0 library <http://int64.org/viewcode.php?id=11>. :-)

--
Mike Linksvayer
http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people#21




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