Re: [LC Comment ONT] copyright/policy suggestions

On Aug 15, 2010, at 23:51 , Rigo Wenning wrote:

> Hi David, 
> 
> On Friday 13 August 2010 17:41:07 David Singer wrote:
>> If I ask "is this work copyrighted and if so, by who?", I really don't want
>> the answer "well, I have a general statement that says something about
>> your or other people's rights I can give you".
>> 
>> So, is there a problem with having a very specific "a copyright notice goes
>> here" attribute?  I don't see a problem with provision for more general
>> rights expressions (not that I have ever seen them used), but matching
>> what we find on the inside fly-leaf of every book seems a reasonable thing
>> to do, doesn't it?
>> 
> Splitting them is just adding confusion. Copyright is about right. So if you 
> look for some stuff, you want to know if you can use it.

Minimally, I need to know "is this work copyrighted?".  Next, if the answer is "yes" I may need to know who by.  Next, if I don't want to contact them and ask, I might want to know what usage is permitted by the copyright owner.

My point is that the minimal answer to the first two questions is very common practice in the industry, and that providing a semantic match to it in the media API is not a problem, but a recognition of the status quo.

It's also not a problem to go beyond that *as well*, but if you provide a much broader base, then bi-directionality is lost.  

So, if I ask "is this copyrighted, and if so, who by?", I probably do NOT want to be told that I can use excerpts of up to 200 words, as long as they are quoted verbatim in their original language, and published in any jurisdiction except the Netherlands Antilles, or Ethiopia, and as long as attribution is given in the following form [...], and so on.

If I ask "is this copyrighted, and if so, do you know what the permitted usages are?" then the answer you provide is appropriate.


> An example in the 
> spec as Renato has given with 
> 
> :policy[0].statement = "Copyright PLING Inc 2010. All Rights Reserved"
> ma:policy[0].type = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab/#copyright"
> 
> is much easier. It clearly notes that there are no rights given. So either you 
> derive your usage rights from context, you give a dime or you look further 
> into the ma:policy field...
> 
> And there is no confusion left between a copyright expression in 
> "ma:copyright" and "ma:policy"
> 
> The other option to satisfy the rights expression languages folks would be to 
> allow the full fledged licensing in ma:copyright and have all others (e.g. 
> access control or privacy) in ma:policy. A somewhat arbitrary decision that 
> would mean a political spin that the group really does not want to have. 


I am still wondering what the problem is with separating "is this copyrighted and if so by who?" from "what usages are permitted, or not?".

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Monday, 16 August 2010 10:02:20 UTC