discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

James Grimmelmann wrote:
> At 02:55 AM 8/5/2004, Marc A. Garrett wrote:
> > Also, it would be neat if I could tag an item as outside the scope of my
> > license; that way either a computer or human reading my site would know
> > how to respond.
>
> This issue is more relevant to the metadata list, so I'm cc'ing this 
> thread over there.  It is an important idea and a relevant issue.

The default metadata we hand out indicates the current resource (i.e., 
the content of the current web page) is licensed.  Example:

<Work rdf:about="">
  <license rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"/>
</Work>

This is a little bit fuzzy in cases where you have multiple "works" in a 
single page.  You can help search engines by adding hints about what 
sort of media the work is:

<Work rdf:about="">
  <license rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"/>
  <dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text"; />
</Work>

If you want to explicitly denote the rights assciated with individual 
images you could include statements about each:

<Work rdf:about="">
  <license rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"/>
  <dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text"; />
</Work>
<Work rdf:about="http://example.com/foo.jpg";>
  <license 
rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/"/>
  <dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage"; />
</Work>

If foo.jpg isn't under a CC license at all, the best I can think of 
right now is to include a dc:rights statement:

<Work rdf:about="http://example.com/foo.jpg";>
  <dc:rights>(c) 2004 Bob Cook</dc:rights>
  <dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage"; />
</Work>

I've occasionally thought it might be useful to publish CC-style 
metadata for the "all rights reserved" default copyright, and encourage 
people using default copyright to link to that visibly and/or as the 
object in a cc:license statement:

<Work rdf:about="http://example.com/foo.jpg";>
  <cc:license rdf:resource="http://allrightsreserved.org/mineminemine"/>
  <dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage"; />
</Work>

Or something like that.  I know that Lucas Gonze has some 
similar/related ideas.

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