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cc-metadata - Re: [cc-metadata] non-web embedding revisited

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Subject: discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

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  • From: Lucas Gonze <lgonze AT panix.com>
  • To: discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work <cc-metadata AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-metadata] non-web embedding revisited
  • Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 12:04:42 -1000 (HST)


I'd like to suggest an alternative (complementary, not exclusive) approach -- embed a unique and canonical ID (preferably a URL) and do the license hacking via web tools which annotate that ID. This moves as much functionality as possible out of media file formats, which are an endless nightmare, and allows third parties to to create lookup infrastructure in a decentralized way.


On Fri, 23 Dec 2005, Mike Linksvayer wrote:

A long time ago there was some discussion concerning license metadata in
files disassociated from the web, eg
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-metadata/2003-June/000123.html

In retrospect the conclusion to shove a simultaneously semi human
readable and semi machine parseable statement in the "TCOP" field was
dumb. It isn't very readable, isn't exposed by programs if it were,
isn't translatable, and is hideous from the perspective of machine
parsing.

We're going to release recommendations for embedding similar web-backed
notices in several other file formats over the next year, so now may be
a good time to correct the original mistake, create a new recommendation
for MP3/ID3, and replicate that recommendation elsewhere. (There isn't
that much properly marked content out there using the existing
recommendation, and only a few programs that look for compliant embedded
metadata, all of which I suspect would be glad to comply with a saner
standard.)

The new recommendation would probably be to use two fields specifically
intended to contain URLs and only URLs. For ID3v2, those might be

WCOP (pointing to a license URL)
Definition: http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0.html#WCOP
Example value: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

WOAF (pointing to a web page describing a file, potentially including
license information/metadata)
Definition: http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0.html#WOAF
Example value: http://example.com/a_song_sung_by_me.html

Note that these map to current use of licenses and metadata on web pages
-- the license notice points to a CC license URL, and describes the
current page (the current page is its own "official page").

Comments? Suggestions for implementation in other formats? I'm
particularly interested in EXIF, MP4/QT and OGG at this point.

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

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