Re: RDFa, FUD and ethics

I don't think CC license by default is a good idea - no license was
always a default for content on the web and making this decision for
content creator is not a fair.

Drupal is not a MediaWiki where model is collaborative by default
either and even there there you have to pick a license.

In any case, I don't think that licensing is supposed to solve this
problem and no license is needed for uses like SEO - that's where safe
harbor thing comes to play ("I'm not a lawyer, consult professional"
disclaimer goes here).

It doesn't mean that license should not be expressed - it just needs
to be defined in computer readable form so computers can automate
sharing within license restrictions and provide URL for additional
information about the license in case consumer has needs falling
outside these restrictions. I think that good licensing wizard like CC
license picker in MediaWiki installer can help a lot.

Again, that doesn't stop engines like Google from using the data for
humane purposes (IMHO).

            Sergey


On Monday, August 9, 2010, David Peterson <david@davidseth.net> wrote:
>  Hello,
>
> I think Keith's suggestion to implement a license to be added to the RDFa is very good. That is one grey area of semantic content (RDFa) re-use and meshing that needs a clearer model. So by automatically including this licensing, I know I can re-use the data (or even better, the machine readable info can be automatically read by machines and used).
>
> I also like Christopher St John's idea of using explanatory text:
>
>    Then how about a warning along the lines of:
>
>      "Drupal defaults to being very open to optimize search
>      engine results and promote data reuse. You can make Drupal
>      more closed, but that might lower your search engine rankings.
>      Here's how to close it up."
>
> So in closing, I think that RDFa should be switched on by default, but with licensing (CC by default) and better help text in place.
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
>
> On 10/08/2010 9:01 AM, Keith Alexander wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:10 PM, Mark Birbeck
> <mark.birbeck@webbackplane.com>  wrote:
>
> Is it not possible to make one of the configuration questions a clear
> question about whether the user would like to enable certain features?
> I don't mean "Would you like RDFa support?", but more like "Would you
> like to allow sites to crawl your xyz data so that they can foobar?"
> There could be some links and explanatory text so that people knew
> what is going on, and how they would benefit from exposing their data.
>
>
> Since RDFa is only exposing data that is already public, and since "do
> you want RDFa?" might be an over-technical question for some people, a
> good way of making Drupal users aware of the possibility for re-using
> the data they publish could be to ask them to give it a  license (or
> waiver [1]), making the terms for that reuse explicit.
>
> A parallel could be the way Flickr gives users the ability to attach
> various licenses to their own photos, but whereas the Flickr default
> is the most restrictive option (full copyright),  it would probably be
> more appropriate for the Drupal default to be a very permissive
> option, like CC0 [2].
>
> Are there already plans for including license/waiver declarations in the RDFa?
>
>
> Keith
>
>
> [1]http://vocab.org/waiver/terms/
> [2]http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/
>
>
>
>
>

-- 

Thank you,

         Sergey


--
Sergey Chernyshev
http://www.sergeychernyshev.com/

Received on Tuesday, 10 August 2010 02:38:07 UTC