- From: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
- Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 11:17:23 +0000 (GMT)
- To: Graham Klyne <Graham.Klyne@MIMEsweeper.com>
- cc: Aaron Swartz <me@aaronsw.com>, RDF Core <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
On Sat, 23 Mar 2002, Graham Klyne wrote: > At 01:59 PM 3/22/02 -0600, Aaron Swartz wrote: > > Looks good... some comments. > > > > It is important to note that RDF language is used to transmit > > meaningful information, and thus has the same legal status as > > assertions, in say, English would. > > I strongly suggest dropping this last paragraph. If there's anything > likely to snarl up approval through IETF/IESG/IANA processes, I think this > is it. And it's not necessary to make this point for registering the > content type. I'd agree with Graham here; actually, I'd go further. RDF does _not_ have the same legal status as written English assertions until test cases say it does. That's (in my opinion) unlikely to happen for quite some time: - RDF/XML is gibberish. It's going to be close to impossible to get a court to give it the same status as English. - a court can decide on the meaning of English because there's a "common interpretation" to draw from. In the case of libellous RDF, there's a good defence: - my intended interpretation for those particular URI-labelled properties is completely innocent; - any english content in a URI label is inadmissable because RDF is built on something which says, "URIs are opaque"* Unless/until you have a "common interpretation", you're not going to get very far. I don't think the W3C has sanctioned a schema for name-calling yet :-) This is, I think, distinct from the use of RDF to transmit machiine-generated content for machine consumption. Otherwise, good stuff. IANAL, but that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion- jan * or words to that effect; DanCon has good arguments for this. -- jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ Tel +44(0)117 9287088 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 RFC822 jan.grant@bris.ac.uk and Nostradamus never dreamed of the Church of the Accellerated Worm
Received on Saturday, 23 March 2002 06:17:42 UTC