licensing-brainstorming
Licensing Brainstorming
Brainstorming proposals toward a licensing microformat per the microformats process.
Discussion
Set of classes pertinent to supporting licensing and attribution requirements and complements. These classes could be used at webpage level or within relevant microformats, e.g., media-info.
reuse limitations
rel-license has already been specified to apply to the entire document, and thus many current implementations (e.g. search engines) already assume that whenever they see rel="license" that it applies to the whole page.
If we tried to re-use rel-license in the licensing microformat to refer to part of a page or an external resource, existing implementations would mis-interpret such a use as applying to the whole page.
Thus in order to not break backward compatibility with existing rel-license implementations, if we want something like rel-license for the licensing microformat, we must use a new rel value.
table of possible properties
The first column may be too URL-centric, see notes for parent work, may apply to others.
| Overly descriptive strawman not intended to conform with any convention | Existing class(es); source | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| work title | fn; hCard | See examples#title |
| attribution name, creator? | author; hAtom, hcard | Might be a vcard with fn, may also be an organization
See examples#attribution |
| attribution url | url; hCard | An author might have a url, should this be taken as the attribution url? If a work has a url, should it be taken as the attribution url?
See examples#link |
| donation url | payment; rel-payment offer; hListing |
How to disambiguate from commercial licensing and purchase?
See examples#donation |
| commercial licensing url | payment; rel-payment sell, offer; hListing |
How to disambiguate from donation and purchase?
See examples#commercial |
| purchase url | payment; rel-payment sell, offer; hListing |
How to disambiguate from donation and commercial licensing?
See examples#purchase |
| content hash | checksum, sha1; hash-examples | See examples#hash |
| provenance url | See examples#provenance | |
| parent work url?, derivitave-source | Should this be a url? Maybe it should be a TBD "media" microformat which may be otherwise described. Probably should be a URL -- a uf can have a #URL if it has an id. | |
| attribution, copied-source | Shows where the media was immediately copied from (not necessarily the same as its original source). Has the same challenges as derivative-source. Perhaps use the approach loosely outlined in Attribution Challenges | |
| source | Like 'copied-source' but points to the original source. |
Attribution Challenges
Tags dealing with specifying sources and tracking a piece of media's path through the Web (any of the -source tags above) are a little ambiguous in terms of what they can reference. For instance when specifying a derivative work it could be from another image on the Internet, in which case an URL would be appropriate, or it could be a quotation from a magazine or other "real" world source where an URL doesn't really work. Perhaps we can encourage the content of these 'media source' tags to be one of the following:
| Media source type | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Internet source | An URL | |
| Person | hcard | |
| Publication (book, magazine, etc.) |
citation | Citation appears to be heavily weighed towards academia but it looks like it should work for most purposes |
| Film/Video | ?? | I'm not sure about this one. Would citation stretch over visual media? Perhaps media-info? |
Strawman example
Perhaps there should be an 'attribution' class which might hint that a fn or url should be used for attribution? Something like (webpage scope):
<a class="url attribution fn" href="http://example.com">My First Cookbook</a> <div class="author vcard"> <div class="fn attribution">J Doe</div> </div> <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/">(cc)</a> <a rel="payment" href="http://paypal.com/...">don't let me starve</a>
Strawman example for media
Note the media-info is not even defined yet, this is not even strawman quality.
<div class="media">
<img class="url attribution mediaitem" src="http://example.com/cake.jpg"/>
<span class="fn">Picture of a giant cake</span>
<div class="author vcard">
<div class="fn attribution">J Doe</div>
</div>
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/">(cc)</a>
<a rel="payment" href="http://paypal.com/...">don't let me <s>starve</s>eat cake</a>
<a rel="payment" href="http://artdelivery.example">buy this pic, framed</a>
<a rel="payment" href="http://photoclearing.example">get commercial rights</a>
...
</div>
Todo
- Answer questions above and those not posed
- Discover and fix gratuitous problems with the above
- Examples working with media-info
Creative Commons Vocab
Creative Commons has an RDF vocabulary which may be suitable for reuse. Here is an example using the Creative Commons vocab. It goes a long way to meeting all the stated requirements.
<div class="License"> <a rev="license" href="http://example.org/work">The work</a> is licensed under the <a rel="legalcode" href="http://example.org/foo">Foo Licence</a>. Summary: it permits <abbr title="DerivativeWorks" class="permits">derivative works</abbr> but requires <abbr title="Attribution" class="requires" >attribution</abbr>. The credit to give when reusing the work is "<span class="vcard"><a href="http://tobyinkster.co.uk" class="fn url attributionName" rel="attributionURL">Toby Inkster</a></span>". </div>
The microformat could use the following terms:
- License {1} (root class name)
- legalcode ? (rel value, not class)
- morePermissions * (rel value, not class)
- permits * ("Reproduction" | "Distribution" | "DerivativeWorks" | "HighIncomeNationUse" | "Sharing")
- requires * ("CopyrightNotices" | "Attribution" | "ShareAlike" | "SourceCode")
- prohibits * ("CommercialUse")
- jurisdiction * (text | hCard | adr)
- attributionName ?
- attributionURL ? (rel value, not class)
- deprecatedOn ? (ISO date)
The license linked to using rel="legalcode" (if any) should be taken to be the definitive license. When such a license is present, the "permits", "requires", "prohibits" and "jurisdiction" classes are taken to be merely advisory. When no "legalcode" license is linked to, these classes are definitive.
rel-license SHOULD be used to link from the work to the license (an ID attribute on the license will help). A license MAY link back to the work using rev="license", but forward links are preferred.
As an extension to the creative commons vocabulary (which focuses on open-source-like licenses) a payment URL MAY be linked to using an anchor element simultaneously carrying class="requires" and rel="payment". Example:
<a class="requires" rel="payment" href="https://payment.example.org">buy</a>
If rel-payment is used without a class of "requires", then the link is taken to be an optional payment link - i.e. a donation.