License LINK Headers and Linked Data

Hi,

There's one aspect of my document on publishing machine-readable
rights statements that I want to flag to this community.

Specifically its the section on including references to licence and
rights statements from LINK headers in HTTP responses:

https://github.com/theodi/open-data-licensing/blob/master/guides/publisher-guide.md#linking-to-rights-statements-from-web-apis

While that information can also be published in RDF, as part of the
Linked Data response, I think adding LINK headers is very important
too, for several reasons:

Linked Data applications and browsers will commonly encounter new
resources and the licensing information should be immediately clear.
Having this be accessible outside of the response will allow user
agents to be able to clearly detect licences before they start
retrieving data from a new source. This will allow users to place
pre-conditions on what type of data they want to
harvest/collect/process.

A HEAD request can be made on a resource to check its licensing,
before data is actually retrieved.

Cheers,

L.

-- 
Leigh Dodds
Freelance Technologist
Open Data, Linked Data Geek
t: @ldodds
w: ldodds.com
e: leigh@ldodds.com

Received on Monday, 12 August 2013 16:15:01 UTC