On Sun, 8 May 2005, Roger B. wrote: > > > A "rights" description might talk about trademarks, registered > > trademarks, service marks, and so forth: different from copyright.
Isolating this statement creates a misrepresentation of the argument for using the label "rights". The quoted statement is a reminder that "copyright" is only ONE kind of "right" typically treated as intellectual property right. However, the more substantive argument for using the label "rights" is that users nowadays want to express an intent about permissions for usage (particular usages, in particular usage contexts, by particular classes of corporate entities, with particular financial restrictions, etc), and these expression for permission fall outside the realm of "copyright." I made a survey of the major metadata specifications in use, as well as a number of syndication formats: most of them formally recognize the difference between "rights" and "copyright" with respect to digital works. I won't bother this Atom list with a list of such specifications/standards, beause it's (apparently) irrelevant. One example, might help, in case the examples already given (Dublin Core, dc:rights etc, and Open Archive Initiative) [1] are unclear. A new example is IPTC's NewsML [2]. Here's a summary of NewsML followed by a summary of the NewsML documentation explaining why the markup language uses a 'RightsMetadata' markup element, and not just 'copyright' NewsML, according to the developers, is "the versatile News Markup Language for global news exchange. NewsML is designed to provide a media-independent, structural framework for multi-media news. It's used by Business Wire, Reuters, and many others (e.g., Agence France Presse, ANA, ANSA, Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association NSK, JCN Newswire, MarketWire, PA News, PR Newswire, SDA/ATS, The Irish Times, United Press International, Wall Street Journal Online). NewsML can be applied at all stages in the (electronic) news lifecycle. Typical use would include: (1) in and between editorial systems; (2) between news agencies and their customers; (3) between publishers and news aggregators; (4) and between news service providers and end users." Hopefully, it's obvious why Atom and NewsML often appear in the same list of technologies for news syndication. NewsML and Atom both have markup elements for "metadata"; NewsML has a few more than Atom's 15x, but the idea is the same: there's "content" and "metadata" (about content). In the NewsML documentation for metadata markup elements, the distinction is made between "copyrights" and "usage rights": arguably, forcing all "rights" information into "copyright" is suboptimal, as well as simply incorrect with respect to bodies of law that govern these concepts. NewsML documentation: [4] "4.1.1 Classes of metadata NewsML divides the world of Metadata at the NewsComponent level into four classes: 1) Administrative Metadata: information about a package of news objects, or about the creation of the content contained in or referenced by the constituents of the NewsComponent. 2) Descriptive Metadata: information about the content contained in or referenced by the constituents of the NewsComponent. 3) Rights Metadata: information about the copyrights and usage rights of the content contained in or referenced by the constituents 4) Miscellaneous: other metadata... The RightsMetadata element contains information about the rights pertaining to the constituents of a NewsComponent, and any relevant usage rights that have been granted by the copyright holder to other parties." There's the difference, as articulated by NewsML, very similar to the markup terms used by Dublin Core, OAI-PMH, and a large number of other syndication/metadata formats: "copyright" is a narrow legal term that distinct from usage rights and other kinds of rights that are commonly expressed for Internet resources. > Robin: In my opinion, the only place an atom:copyright should appear > is at the feed level, Interesting: the Atom spec does not seem to share this point of view, if I have read it correctly Cheers, -rcc > as an assertion of ownership of the feed > document itself. Rights statements relating to individual entries > should live within the content, particularly references to trademarks > and the like. > > So I guess I'm -1 on atom:rights. > > -- > Roger Benningfield [1] http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg14944.html [2] http://www.newsml.org/pages/index.php [3] http://www.newsml.org/pages/whouse_main.php [4] http://www.newsml.org/IPTC/NewsML/1.2/documentation/NewsML_1.2-doc-Guidelines_1.00.pdf > > --
