Comments below. Wendy Seltzer wrote: > [snip] > Thanks James, > I'm still not clear on what's happening in 1.1. > > [snip] >> >> 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? >
What I'm saying is that feed consumers have no guarantee as to who added the license link to the feed/entry and whether whoever did had the legal right to do so. Nor is there any guarantee that license links within a feed or entry have not been inappropriately modified. Feed publishers can digitally sign Atom feeds and entries to provide some non-repudiation protection, but doing so is optional and is not a guaranteed solution. > I'd recommend dropping this paragraph, as it may give incorrect legal > advice. > Ok. >> > 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? > It's the latter. The license's coverage differs depending on where it appears. >[snip] - James
