discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

Evan Prodromou wrote:
> There's an entire standard for doing Dublin Core metadata in HTML
> <link> and <meta> tags. No RDF necessary.

I know.  I've read the relevant standardese.

> Dublin Core (HINT: CC's metadata is a slight variation on DC) has a
> whole slew of recommendations for encoding Dublin Core data, here:

I don't think that's quite right.

Some of CC's metadata (e.g., License characteristics -- permits, 
requires, prohibits) is outside the scope of DC.

We recommend use of much of DC off the shelf to descirbe licensed works.

There are a few unfortunate cases where our recommendation is a slight 
variation on, divergence from, or extension of standard DC usage -- 
cc:license, dc:rights, and cc:Agent.

Stu Weibel (DC) and Eric Miller (formerly DC, currently at W3C and a CC 
advisor) are apparently working on a proposal that I eagerly await to 
close these gaps.

> Let me also point out that <link> tags and <meta> tags are not
> single-purpose little fellows, in the HTML world. They're used for
> CSS stylesheets, for navigation, for keywording, for all kinds of
> stuff. The DC recommendation is a way to use them for marking up DC
> data.

Sure.  And you can do a straigtforward conversion of dc:rights and 
cc:license as used in CC RDF to DC-in-meta-tags.  Which I think is the 
way to go if someone wants to specify that a page is under a CC license 
in meta tags.  And of course you can use whatever other DC properties 
you want to in meta and link tags as appropriate.

> Another way is just <link>'ing out to an RDF or other metadata
> file.

That's the one that we mention at 
<http://creativecommons.org/technology/metadata/extend>.

> Anyways, just want to make sure you grokked all that.

Grok might be too strong a word, but I do have some familiarity with all 
that. :-)

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