Network Working Group J. Snell
Internet-Draft April 10, 2006
Expires: October 12, 2006
Atom License Extension
draft-snell-atompub-feed-license-06.txt
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
Abstract
This memo defines an extension to the Atom Syndication Format for
associating copyright licenses with Atom feeds and entries.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. The 'license' link relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 7
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1. Introduction
This document defines how Atom feed publishers can associate
copyright licenses with the informational content of an entry.
Licenses associated using these mechanisms MAY or MAY not be machine
readable and are intended to communicate the various rights and
obligations others may have with regards to the associated Atom Feed
or Entry.
2. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, [RFC2119].
3. The 'license' link relation
An Atom link element with a 'rel' attribute value of 'license' is
used to associate a copyright license with an Atom Feed or Entry.
Atom entry, feed and source elements MAY each contain any number of
license links but MUST NOT contain more than one with the same href
value. The IRI specified by the link's 'href' attribute SHOULD be
dereferenceable to return a machine or human-readable representation
of the license.
Implementors should note that, unlike the Atom rights element, which
specifies a human-readable statement of the rights held over a entry
or feed, license links apply only to the informational content of the
containing element. That is, the presence of a license link relation
within an Atom feed element does not extend a license over the
various contained entry elements. Likewise, the presence of a
license link within an Atom source element does not extend a license
over the informational content of the containing entry.
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For example
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<id>http://www.example.com/myfeed</id>
<title>My Example Feed</title>
<updated>2005-07-28T12:00:00Z</updated>
<link href="http://www.example.com/myfeed" />
<link rel="license"
type="text/html"
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/" />
<author><name>James</name></author>
<entry>
<id>tag:entries.com,2005:1</td>
<title>My original entry</title>
<link href="http://www.example.com/entries/1" />
<summary>This is my original entry</summary>
<link rel="license"
type="text/html"
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/" />
</entry>
</feed>
Multiple license links appearing within an element is an indication
that the informational content has been published under multiple
copyright licenses. In such instances, each of the linked licenses
is considered a mutually exclusive alternative to the others. That
is to say, for example, if an entry contains license links to both a
Creative Commons License and the General Public License (GPL), the
informational content is considered to be licensed either as
"Creative Commons OR GPL" as opposed to "Creative Commons AND GPL".
If multiple license link relations are specified, each SHOULD contain
a title attribute that specifies a human readable label for each
license link.
4. Security Considerations
As an extension of the Atom Syndication Format, the license link
relation is subject to the same security considerations described in
section 8 of [RFC4287].
5. IANA Considerations
This specification defines one new Atom link relation type to be
registered in the IANA Registry of Link Relations as defined by
[RFC4287].
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Attribute Value: license
Description: Specifies the IRI of a copyright license
associated with the containing feed, entry
or source element.
Expected display characteristics: None
Security considerations: None
6. References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4287] Nottingham, M. and R. Sayre, "The Atom Syndication
Format", RFC 4287, December 2005.
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the feedback from Mike Linksvayer,
Robin Cover, and the members of Atom Publishing Format and Protocol
working group during the development of this specification.
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Author's Address
James M Snell
Phone:
Email: jasnell@gmail.com
URI: http://www.snellspace.com
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Intellectual Property Statement
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at
ietf-ipr@ietf.org.
Disclaimer of Validity
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
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ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
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Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). This document is subject
to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.
Acknowledgment
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
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