I am taking the liberty of forwarding this message fragment to the
meta2 and image meta lists because I think its a particularly
concise statement of the role of a rights management field
in the Dublin Core.
It is from a note from Jerry Saltzer (of MIT, currently at Stanford).
I hope Jerry will chime in if I am violating context (eor, even if
I'm not).
> Here is another concrete example: There has been some discussion of
> adding a rights management field, including the suggestion that there
> is no such thing as a simple rights management indicator. That
> suggestion is based on the assumption that the rights management field
> would contain a *copy* of some, possibly condensed, rights management
> information. If it instead contained a *reference* to a rights
> management object that would restore simplicity to the core, while
> subcontracting the debate about what is in that object to a different
> discussion group. More important, it allows 400 objects to all have
> the same rights management plan. The present approach of the Dublin
> Core would, if a rights management field were added, call for the
> rights management information to be replicated 400 times, and
> introduce the awkward problem of tracking down all the copies if the
> uniform rights management plan changes.
Perhaps I like this note particularly because it supports my assertion that
a rights management field must be a pointer or nothing at all. Terry Allen
has suggested we should not go down this path unless we really know what will
be at the end. I'm not so sure.
stu
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