At 04:08 PM 9/5/2006 -0700, James M Snell wrote:
Hello Wendy,
Thanks for the feedback. I've cc'd the atom-syntax list so the rest of
the Atom community can comment.
Thanks James,
I'm still not clear on what's happening in 1.1.
> 1.1 It must also be noted that licenses associated with feeds or entries
> using these mechanisms are advisory and are not, by themselves,
> legally binding. Nor can a license associated with a feed or entry
> restrict or forbid access to, redistribution, aggregation, caching
> and display of those items by third party intermediaries such as
> search engines and so-called "online aggregators".
>
> Why can't they be legally binding? They're not self-executing, but
> licenses outside of feeds aren't either, and likewise may or may not be
> legally binding depending upon other things than just the form of their
> expression.
To this point I've received exactly the opposite feedback from others
(all of whom weren't lawyers, btw, but who have had experience with
licensing issues in the past).
It is my understanding that the licenses cannot be considered legally
binding *by themselves*. That is, precisely as you indicate, they are
not self-executing.
What I meant by that is that they don't actively restrict
non-compliant use, as a technological protection measure does: I can
receive a feed and choose to breach its license. They can have
legal effect, though: Unless I have some legal excuse such as fair
use, I'm then not compliant and possibly infringing copyright. (You
still have to come after me for copyright infringement.)
Are you trying to say that the license-rel in the feed is merely a
notification to those who are curious that "this is probably (but
we're not certain) the license under which the feed may be used"
? That's the way it reads. If so, what's the point? Don't you
either want to assert "take the feed under this license or not at
all" or say nothing and make people come to you and ask?
I'd recommend dropping this paragraph, as it may give incorrect legal advice.
> 2 "License" link relations appearing within a feed MUST apply to the
> metadata of the containing feed element only and do not extend over
> the metadata or content of any contained entries.
>
> Why? Why would a feed need a license separate from its content? Lots of
> the metadata elements would be functional or would give users fair use
> claims, absent a license.
>
Sam Ruby's planet feed is a prime example. Sam does not own rights over
the individual entries that appear within his feed, however, Sam does
own the rights over the feed itself, including the selection and
arrangement of entries within that feed.
That seems minimally useful to me (the license, not Sam's feed!), but
why prohibit people from licensing their feeds' content too? Or am I
just misreading this, and you're saying that depending on where you
put the tag, the license's coverage differs?
> Entry content might include or reference material from other sources.
> Licenses associated with an entry MUST NOT be assumed to cover such
> material. Implementations cannot necessarily trust that publishers
> have the right to license material claimed to be covered by any
> associated license. Care should be taken when making decisions based
> on the referenced license.
>
> This seems to be going down a road of legal interpretation that's
> unnecessary and not necessarily correct. The current CC licenses are
> offered on a "taker beware" basis -- the licensor offers the rights he
> has, and doesn't guarantee a licensee's rights (or even his own) to
> anything he might have incorporated. That's not the only way to write a
> license, though. (Even within CC, version 1 had an explicit
> representation and warranty section that was dropped in v.2.)
>
> Implementations should trust the legal representations only as much or
> as little as they trust any other claim made by the feed. How licenses
> chain is a matter of individual legal interpretation.
>
Ok, so if I'm interpreting this comment correctly, the recommendation
would be to simply remove the paragraph in question?
Yes.
Thanks,
--Wendy
--
Wendy Seltzer -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org
