discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

["Firas D." <fd AT firasd.org>]

Mike Linksvayer wrote:

> X wrote to me:
>
> > The problem we're trying to get at here is this: there doesn't seem to
> > be an easy way for someone to specify (in a machine readable format)
> > that their entire site fall under a CC license.
> >
> > The only way we've come up with is to have an RDF for each digital
> > object.  It can be embedded in the object itself or a set of them can be
> > gathered up somewhere on the site, but ultimately that's a lot of
> > overhead.
> >
> > We've seen folks say "All content on this site is available under a
> > Creative Commons license."  There seems to be no way to say something
> > similar in a machine readable format.
>
>
> Any ideas?
An HTTP header? X-License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0

This is exactly what I've been wondering about, and was going to collect 
my thoughts a bit before proposing this, but:

Does XMDP provide for a way to add semantics to values of the html class 
attribute?

So people can say

<blockquote class="license-http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0";>
<img class="license-http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0";>
<embed class="license-http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0";>

And so on.

I suggest that the license for each object referenced via an HTML 
document be resolved this way:

1. License embedded in the file; if unavailable, then:
2. License in the license-* value of the class attribute of the HTML tag 
that references it; if unavailable, then:
4. License in the X-License HTTP header.

This is a bit like CSS in the way that the style referenced with the 
most specificity is the style applied from clashing rules.

The license of the HTML document itself should not count because that 
would mean you can't reference any object without adding that the 
license of the HTML document isn't inherited.