Encoding license and license URL into documents.

[Kathi Fletcher]

After much sturm and drang, I propose that we use rdfa syntax for encoding the license and license url into documents' and books' HTML files.

Background: In the OERPUB fork of the Aloha editor, we are encoding all other metadata using microdata and itemtype's from Schema.org, but there are no options from Schema.org for licensing. Dublin Core supports "license" and LRMI supports "useRightsURL" and those would suit us perfectly.

So, since RDFa will validate in HTML5 documents, I propose the following:

In the html element attributes include:
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:lrmi="http://lrmi.net/the-specification"

In the body of the document, include something along the following:
  <div class="license">Licensed:
    <a data-type="license" rel="lrmi:useRightsURL" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
      <span property="dc:license">CC-By 4.0</span>
    </a>
  </div>

Thoughts?

In case you are interested, I also investigated two other methods.

1. using namespaced itemprops. I saw an example of that in video metadata. It validates, but I don't think it ultimately makes sense, because the scoping itemtype is http://schema.org/CreativeWork, and those properties won't be found there.

In the html attributes include:
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:lrmi="http://lrmi.net/the-specification"

  <div itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/CreativeWork">
    <div class="license">Licensed:
      <a data-type="license" itemprop="lrmi:useRightsURL" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
        <span itemprop="dc:license">CC-By 4.0</span>
      </a>
    </div>
  </div>

2. Attaching an itemtype that points to Dublin Core and LRMI. This is the most consistent with microdata formats, and may
eventually be supported. But it is really just wishful thinking right now, since those URL's don't point to a page that describes a schema.
And I certainly don't want to try to invent and host one. Dublin Core is working on a schema.org mapping, but I couldn't find anything
about license to point to. LRMI got all their elements except useRightsURL into Schema.org, so I don't know if they will create a schema just for license.

<div class="license" itemscope="itemscope">Licensed:
    <span itemscope="itemscope"  itemtype="http://lrmi.net/the-specification" >
      <a data-type="license" itemprop="useRightsURL" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
        <span itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
          <span itemprop="license">CC-By 4.0</span>
        </span>
     </a>
    </span>
  </div>

--
Katherine Fletcher, kathi.f...@gmail.com

Twitter: kefletcher Blog: kefletcher.blogspot.com

[Brandon Muramatsu]

Kathi,

Shouldn't you also support the syntax that Creative Commons is using for license? And their format of spelling out the whole license name?

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>.

And are you planning on encoding author and publication title metadata? (As CC does in their license picker.)

Brandon

[Phil Barker]

Hello Kathi, I'm involved with the Creative Commons side of the LRMI work, and I've had a quick chat with some people who work on ccREL, after which I am convinced that I agree with Brandon.

Some background to LRMI's useRightsURL. At the time we first proposed useRightsURL, schema.org was predominantly expressed as microdata (it may even have been before schema's decision to support RDFa), and there was no alternative way to encode license information in schema.org. The intention was that useRightsURL would complement rel="license" in those cases where schema.org / microdata was being used in preference to RDFa. That intention wasn't fully achieved as schema.org didn't adopt useRightsURL, so while it is possible (at a stretch) to use useRightsURL alongside schema.org in microdata, it might not be widely understood. In such a case it would make sense to also use the widely understood rel="license" (xhtml:license, which is very widely understood, or cc:license)

It was never the intention the useRightsURL would be an alternative to rel="license" in RDFa, i.e. that it would be used to replace rather than to complement rel="license". If you really are committed to useRightsURL then I believe you can you use both, so
  <div class="license">Licensed:
    <a data-type="license" rel="license lrmi:useRightsURL" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">

      <span property="dc:license">CC-By 4.0</span>
    </a>
  </div>

should validate and gives better output using Google's structured data testing tool than use of lrmi:useRightsURL alone, see
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=uploaded:8004f2d34671f47cf06a6f16bb4314f6

Hope this helps, Phil.

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[Kathi Fletcher]

So, basically three people have now mentioned that using rel="license" would be much simpler and be recognized by existing tools. We will go with that. I was just overcomplicating things.

Thanks to all for the help.

Kathi

[Kathi Fletcher]

Embedded in Brandon's comment was another issue, a standardized text representation for each license.

I looked on CC's site to see if I could find that somewhere, and couldn't find a quick list for the current licenses. Does anyone have a link?

Here is where I looked (and I could easily have missed something):
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/RelLicense
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_REL
http://labs.creativecommons.org/2011/ccrel-guide/ (nice!)

The latter three have examples that use "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License". That seems simple enough to follow. For the 4.0 licenses I would assume, we just replace 3.0 with 4.0.

Kathi

[Brandon Muramatsu]

Kathi, I just look at what the License picker says, and pattern match from that.

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