[cc-devel] How to deal with multiple content items & possible different licenses?

[BjornW]

Hi,

As some of you know I'm currently working on restoring / recreating a
WordPress CC licensing plugin.

During this I've come across an issue which I presume more of you had:

Using one license on a blog or website (aka collection) with multiple
content items (pages, posts, images etc) wherein the individual content
items may or may not have been licensed the same as the website itself
is confusing. How have you solved this issue?

After discussing this with Tarmo we were thinking of solving this issue
by adding some extra (human-readable) text to the license, warning
people that the default for the site is license X, but that an
individual page or post may have a different license. The warning will
only be shown on each page where there are more than one content items
shown. Secondly I'll add a filter which automatically adds the
individual license to the content (using a WordPress hook) so every
single post will display it's own license (or the same license as the
site). Btw I'm not sure how to use the same warning in RDF in such a way
that parsers are also made aware of this (not sure if this would be even
possible given that this might be something part of an individual
parser' implementation).

Suggestions are more than welcome,

grtz
BjornW

[Peter Liljenberg]

Post by BjornW
Btw I'm not sure how to use the same warning in RDF in such a way
that parsers are also made aware of this (not sure if this would be even
possible given that this might be something part of an individual
parser' implementation).

With the risk of misunderstanding you, here's some thoughts on this based
on my experiments with using RDFa on web pages automatically (see
http://commonsmachinery.se/labs/ for runnable prototypes)

RDFa allows you to identify which object you are describing, so you can
describe the different licenses for multiple resources on a page. The
ccREL guide has an example of this:
http://labs.creativecommons.org/2011/ccrel-guide/#Multiple

That example is about an individual image on a web page. If we consider
the case of a post on a blog I can see three alternatives. In this
example, the post has the URL http://myblog/guest-post/ while the blog as a
whole has the URL http://myblog/.

Alternative 1: just describe the post license. On the page
http://myblog/guest-post/, you would just have something like:

<div about="">
Post author: <span property="cc:attributionName">Mr. Guest
Author</span><br>
Post license: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC
BY-SA 3.0</a>
</div>

The about="" is implied, and can be skipped if that makes things easier.


Alternative 2: describe the license for both this post and the blog as a
whole. This can in the easiest case be done by including the block above,
and then an additional block about the blog as a whole:

<div about="http://myblog/">
Blog license (except where noted): <a href="
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC BY 3.0</a>
</div>

The risk with this approach is that it is not clear to an RDFa user what
license applies to header images etc. If that is really important, perhaps
the best approach is to include a license block such significant page items
too.



Alternative 3: identify the section of the web page that's the guest blog
post. While I think this could be a really good way to provide a lot of
information to tools, it is probably still pretty experimental. This
requires that the plugin can mark the block that contains the blog post
itself, e.g.:

<div id="#post-4711">
Hi, this is my guest post about ...
</div>

<div about="#post-4711">
Post author: <span property="cc:attributionName">Mr. Guest
Author</span><br>
Post license: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC
BY-SA 3.0</a>
</div>

And then the standard blog license block, now about the page as a whole
again:

<div about="">
Blog license (except where noted): <a href="
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC BY 3.0</a>
</div>


On balance, I think alternative 2 is the best trade-off in a production
tool here and now, although it adds a bit of complexity to the plugin.

Regards,
Peter Liljenberg, Commons Machinery
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[BjornW]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your quick reply. This seems to be exactly I was looking for!

I'm not completely sure, but I think I can even implement option #3.
I'll keep you & the rest of the mailinglist updated on how I've
implemented this.

grtz
BjornW

On 20 November 2013 17:19, BjornW <burobjorn at gmail.com
Btw I'm not sure how to use the same warning in RDF in such a way
that parsers are also made aware of this (not sure if this would be even
possible given that this might be something part of an individual
parser' implementation).
With the risk of misunderstanding you, here's some thoughts on this
based on my experiments with using RDFa on web pages automatically
(see http://commonsmachinery.se/labs/ for runnable prototypes)
RDFa allows you to identify which object you are describing, so you
can describe the different licenses for multiple resources on a page.
http://labs.creativecommons.org/2011/ccrel-guide/#Multiple
That example is about an individual image on a web page. If we
consider the case of a post on a blog I can see three alternatives.
In this example, the post has the URL http://myblog/guest-post/ while
the blog as a whole has the URL http://myblog/.
Alternative 1: just describe the post license. On the page
<div about="">
Post author: <span property="cc:attributionName">Mr. Guest
Author</span><br>
Post license: <a
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>
</div>
The about="" is implied, and can be skipped if that makes things easier.
Alternative 2: describe the license for both this post and the blog as
a whole. This can in the easiest case be done by including the block
<div about="http://myblog/">
Blog license (except where noted): <a
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC BY 3.0</a>
</div>
The risk with this approach is that it is not clear to an RDFa user
what license applies to header images etc. If that is really
important, perhaps the best approach is to include a license block
such significant page items too.
Alternative 3: identify the section of the web page that's the guest
blog post. While I think this could be a really good way to provide a
lot of information to tools, it is probably still pretty experimental.
This requires that the plugin can mark the block that contains the
<div id="#post-4711">
Hi, this is my guest post about ...
</div>
<div about="#post-4711">
Post author: <span property="cc:attributionName">Mr. Guest
Author</span><br>
Post license: <a
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>
</div>
And then the standard blog license block, now about the page as a
<div about="">
Blog license (except where noted): <a
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">CC BY 3.0</a>
</div>
On balance, I think alternative 2 is the best trade-off in a
production tool here and now, although it adds a bit of complexity to
the plugin.
Regards,
Peter Liljenberg, Commons Machinery

--
met vriendelijke groet,
Bjorn Wijers

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