discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Andy Powell <a.powell AT ukoln.ac.uk>]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, Lucas Gonze wrote:

> I'd like to be able to use the CC schema at http://web.resource.org/cc/
> in non-RDF XML.  This is because the schema should be useful to people
> who, right or wrong, aren't willing to pay the RDF tax.  A lot of
> people will not use RDF at this point, and there's no technical reason
> why that should prevent them from using the CC schema.
>
> Obviously I can just go ahead and do that, but there is one small
> adjustment that would be nice.  The namespace definition/description at
> http://web.resource.org/cc/ says "The CC schema lets you describe
> copyright licenses in RDF".  If this said "The CC schema lets you
> describe copyright licenses in XML", it would be easier to sell people
> on using CC.
>
> Thoughts?

There appears to be some ongoing(?) work looking at encoding CC licences
using ODRL (Open Digital Rights Language) which might be of interest.
E.g. see

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Studies%206.pdf

and

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2003-09-26-a.html

though I must admit I'm not quite sure about the current status of this
activity.

One other thought...  I've never quite understood the need to embed a
description of the licence into every metadata record.  This makes some
sense in the context of RDF, where one can expect consuming applications
to 'understand' what they are getting, but even in that context it seems
very inefficient to embed a copy of the licence into every RDF/XML
document.

In the context of plain XML (where no semantics are being carried except
as defined by the particular XML application) the important information is
wrapped up in the CC licence URL.  Surely, all you need to do is encode
that URL into your instance metadata using either

<dc:rights>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/</dc:rights>

or

<cc:license>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/</cc:license>

or something similar.  Why is it necessary (or useful) to encode a
description of the license into every bit of instance metadata?

Andy
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