discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

Evan Prodromou wrote:
>     ML> I think these definitions map best to your option (C) --
>     ML> "creator" and "contributor" roles are assigned based on the
>     ML> relative importance of the contribution.
>
> That's what I figured, but I wasn't sure how closely the CC RDF mapped
> to the license requirements. Should I be able to tell from the
> metadata who the parties to the license are?

Two things:
1) dc:rights (and soon dcterms:rightsHolder I hope) maps to the licensor 
party.  Creators and contributors may or may not own any rights.
2) The mapping between the rights holder and the license grant in the 
RDF is not explicit -- the following triples may be present

Work, rightsHolder, JohnDoe.
Work, license, by-sa.

but there is no explicit statement that JohnDoe is making the license 
grant.  I think in order to do that you'd need to assign the license 
property an ID and have a triple like

#license, licensor, JohnDoe.

I don't know that the added complexity is worthwhile, and the above may 
be a bad approach anyhow -- I've brought up the same construct in 
offline conversations about adding warranty statements and have been 
advised to avoid reification (statements about statements).

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