data-portability

2008-01-17T05:03:48Z

7063320145eagle:

[[Media:Example.mp3]]<h1>Data Portability</h1>
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== Summary ==
Data portability is about you, the user, being able to move and use <em>your</em> data across <em>space</em> and across <em>time</em>.

== Expansions ==
* '''your data''' - whether you created it or purchased it
* '''across space''' - different websites, different devices, different media, different applications, space-shifting in general
* '''across time''' - archiving at one point in time, retrieving at another point in time, time-shifting in general

== Relation to microformats ==
Data portability was, and remains, one of the incentives behind the development of [[microformats]], and now microformats have provided key building blocks for enabling or improving data portability across a variety contexts:
* contact information portability. [[hcard|hCard]] has lowered the barrier to sharing contact information on the Web compatibly with the industry standard vCard (RFC 2426) format.
* event portability. With [[hcalendar|hCalendar]], it is possible to upload an event from one calendar site to another and the portability of iCalendar (RFC 2445) data has also been enhanced for the Web.
* [[social-network-portability]]
* ...

== Previous work ==
Data portability has been an important topic for quite some time, our work today stands on the shoulders of that earlier work. Here are a few illustrative citations/examples:
* 2001 [http://digitalconsumer.org/ DigitalConsumer.org] founded [http://digitalconsumer.org/press-factsheet.html by Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer]. key achievements:
** [http://digitalconsumer.org/bill.html Digital Consumer Bill of Rights] - e.g. [http://digitalconsumer.org/overview.html the rights to "time-shift" media, "space-shift" media, make backup copies of your media].
** [http://digitalconsumer.org/testimony-20020425.html 2002-04-25 testified to Congress on "digital rights of consumers"]
* 2005 September Tantek Çelik's [[presentations#2005|2005 presentation]] on [http://tantek.com/presentations/2005/09/microformats-evolution/ "Microformats: Evolving The Web" at Web Essentials 05] began with and emphasized numerous specific user scenarios and points of why data portability matters to every digital citizen, including:
** email archival, retrieval, search, export/import to new applications
** photo archiving
** accessing old archives
** accessing different disk formats, with different hard disk peripheral interfaces (SCSI, Firewire, USB)
** reading old file formats
** transferring your data when upgrading (or just replacing) a personal computer
** historical fragility of online-only data stores (e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop.com Desktop.com], which terminated access without warning and thus effectively "lost" all their users' data).
** partial recoverability of files from hard disk crashes or other corruption
** "You control your own data" - users should own their own data
** Incentives for companies to support open formats: do the right thing, build user trust, easier importing/growth, network effects, outgrow the competition (or established proprietary players)
** ...
** after the event. The original podcast of this session had thought to be (ironically) lost (was published originally at: <nowiki>http://we05.com/podcast/mp3/we05-2-tantek-celik.mp3</nowiki> but we05.com went offline sometime in 2006). However, I was able to recover a copy of it that had been downloaded from some archives, and as the podcast [http://tantek.com/log/2005/10.html#d02t1813 was originally Creative Commons licensed], I have mirrored it on microformats.org ([http://microformats.org/media/2005/09/we05-14-tantek-celik2.mp3 download mp3]) and linked to it from the [[podcasts-2005|2005 podcasts archive]] page on the wiki. -Tantek

== see also ==
* [http://digitalconsumer.org/ DigitalConsumer.org] ([http://digitalconsumer.org/bill.html Bill of Rights])
* [http://opensocialweb.org/ A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web]
* [http://dataportability.org/ dataportability.org]
* [http://groups.google.com/group/dataportability-public/ Data portability discussion (Google) group]

Microformats Wiki - User contributions [en]

data-portability