discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Ryan Shaw <ryanshaw AT sims.berkeley.edu>]

Andrea Glorioso wrote:

> > > > > > "Ryan" == Ryan Shaw <ryanshaw AT SIMS.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>
>     > This reminds me of  something I've been wondering about. Suppose
>     > the  tools  you mentioned are   updated  to include CC  metadata
>     > writing support.  It  becomes very simple  for  anyone to CC-tag
>     > MP3s. Now suppose some  dishonest  people start tagging  MP3s in
>     > which they don't own the  copyright with CC metadata pointing to
>     > false license info   pages (hosted some lawless  place alongside
>     > online casinos   and porn sites).  These MP3s  are then released
>     > onto P2P networks, blogged, etc. Is there any way a search agent
>     > can distinguish  these  falsely CC-licensed files  from actually
>     > CC-licensed files?
>
> Not  unless   you start using    cryptographic   keys  or some   other
> authentication tool so that you can say  X is really  X.  This opens a
> can of worm, namely needing control over the hardware and so on and so
> forth.
>
> Probably  a   better idea  is  to  have   registries of  content  with
> cryptographic timestamping so that author A can legally  say work X is
> really his/her own  work, was released on date  D with licence L, etc,
> etc.

Can you explain this a bit more? How would a search agent be able to 
check whether a given file truly contained CC-licensed content?

Ryan