Thomas Roessler wrote:
> The intent of this spec is to give those who publish a
> feed a way to assert what licensing conditions apply to
> certain parts of that feed.
If a mechanism is provided for "asserting" rights, without warning
folk that the assertions may not be effective, the assumption on the part of
many folk will be that the assertion is, in fact, effective. The result will
be confusion and that confusion can be costly. (Note: I also don't think it
is responsible to sell guns without safety warnings...)
In this case, protection of the limited implied license to syndicate
is a matter of extreme importance to the syndication network. Those of us
who run or have run syndication services already have enough trouble with
folk who stick random "rights language" in their feeds and then think that
these assertions are somehow effective -- or even that the automated
processes that we run can recognize that the language is present. The number
of folk who have attempted, usually unintentionally, to "poison the stream"
of syndication is large.
One excellent example of the confusion that exists is that many
people actually think that Creative Commons licenses are restrictive! While
the CC licenses are generally well drafted, very few people actually read
the things. As a result, there are numerous folk who honestly believe that
Creative Commons licenses can be used as a form of DRM to restrict use. They
believe, for instance, that a CC non-commercial use license actually
restricts commercial use when, in fact, such a license is explicitly silent
on the subject and simply leaves in place pre-existing restrictions (such as
copyright), if there are any, on commercial use.
In this context, I'm particularly concerned about people who will
try to use license assertions to override or diminish the vital but limited
implied license to syndicate -- for instance, when the syndication is
performed by "commercial" organizations. We already have many folk who think
that a CC Non-Commercial license has this effect when attached to a feed or
entry. I think it is in our interest to do what we can to avoid further
confusion by warning people of the limits of their assertions in the
specification. There will still be many who don't read the spec; however,
we'll be providing support to those who try to explain it...
bob wyman
