Re: Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) submission to W3C

Karen,

I have never been comfortable with positive rules only.

Indeed, none of my requirements submissions to the various standards
efforts has ever assumed positive rights only.  As you say, it is often
far simpler to list negative exceptions than positive rules.

There is a tendency for technologists to vote for whatever is the more
straightforward to implement.  I believe that is why there is a bias
towards positive rules only.  On the other hand, whatever languages
become the standards, they must be technically "implementable" in the
domains in which we seek to implement them.

Usually, the best way to drive these things is to participate in the
standards efforts and to submit use-cases.  I don't know of any academic
studies of expressiveness for the various flavours of language construct
that exist today (grateful to hear, if anyone else does), so use-case
scenarios are probably the best we have right now for testing
expressiveness.

Regards,
/Dave.
_ ______________________________________________________________
Dr David J. Parrott (Chartered Engineer) Business Technology Group
      Reuters Limited, 85 Fleet Street, London EC4P 4AJ, UK.
    Direct Line: +44 (0)20 7542 9830, Fax: +44 (0)20 7542 8314
        Email: David.Parrott@reuters.com, dparrott@acm.org


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karen Coyle [mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net]
> Sent: 05 October 2002 16:07
> To: David Parrott; www-drm@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) submission to W3C
> 
> 
> David, I'm obviously way behind on my email, but I thank you
> for the piece 
> on rights, which I will look over more carefully in the next few days.
> 
> I am concerned about the enumeration of rights as well, but
> perhaps from 
> another point of view. As someone involved in academic/non-profit 
> information I find the requirement to list of positive rights to be a 
> barrier. How would I, in most rights languages today, state 
> that I wish the 
> work to be in the public domain? Must I list EVERYTHING that 
> one is allowed 
> to do with the work? Similarly if I want my file to have to 
> standard GNU 
> licensing terms - I would have a long list of "do's" to 
> express what is a 
> fairly simple license.
> 
> Copyright law tells you what you cannot do, and leaves the
> rest to your 
> imagination. This prevents certain behaviors but allows for 
> some level of 
> freedom and innovation. Reversing this to be: "if it isn't 
> listed here you 
> can't do it" is going to run afoul of technological change 
> very quickly.
> 
> If nothing else I want DRM systems to have a switch where I
> can say: this 
> license lists permissions/this license lists prohibitions.
> 
> kc
> 
> At 02:54 PM 9/20/2002 +0100, David Parrott wrote:
> >The commentary at http://www.w3.org/Submission/2002/06/Comment
> >discusses the limitation of "rights" languages with respect to 
> >expressing all possible exceptions.  I have been interested in this 
> >subject for some time, prompted initially by talking to 
> representatives
> >of various societies for blind people in the context of eBook
> >consumption.
> >
> >It struck me that expressing low-level definitions of
> permitted actions
> >is where things start to go wrong.  If I say that an eBook
> can only be
> >consumed using a certain font, on a certain device, etc,
> etc, then the
> >exception of allowing a text-to-speech conversion is ruled out.
> >However, a publisher could not possibly think of all the 
> exceptions.
> >It is simply not scalable.
> >
> >Would it not be better to allow some form of trusted
> interpretation of
> >a higher-level set of rules?  Before people start shouting about
> >complexity, I don't say this is an easy task, and it 
> certainly requires
> >a well thought-out trust framework.
> >
> >Using trusted interpretation that takes account of trusted
> context, one
> >might even be able to tackle some of the "70 years after
> death" issues
> >(a certificate from a trusted agency attesting to date of
> death might
> >form part of the context of interpretation).  Interpretation is not
> >restricted to changing existing rules; it might introduce some new 
> >ones, based on well-defined meta rules.
> >
> >I attach a paper (Zip archive containing HTML + 5 images)
> that I don't
> >think I've shared with this list before (I might have, if so,
> >apologies), although it has been shared with MPEG and OeBF so some 
> >readers may have seen it.  It explores some ideas around the above 
> >theme.  Please view the ideas as examples, and not an attempt at a 
> >definitive answer.  I'd be interested in responses.
> >  <<When is a Right not a Right.zip>>
> >Best regards,
> >/Dave Parrott
> >_ ______________________________________________________________
> >Dr David J. Parrott (Chartered Engineer) Business Technology Group
> >       Reuters Limited, 85 Fleet Street, London EC4P 4AJ, UK.
> >     Direct Line: +44 (0)20 7542 9830, Fax: +44 (0)20 7542 8314
> >         Email: David.Parrott@reuters.com, dparrott@acm.org
> >
> >
> >
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> 
> *********************************************
> Karen Coyle           kcoyle@kcoyle.net
> 
            http://www.kcoyle.net
**********************************************



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Received on Thursday, 10 October 2002 06:18:25 UTC