RE: [rights-examples] ln005: use case with markup for review

In the kind of supplier/aggregator scenario that I'm thinking of, each pointer from content to a license is essentially the supplier saying "aggregator, here's what you're allowed to do with this one." There's really nothing for the aggregator to verify; they've received an identification of the instructions for what they're allowed to do with that content.

I can't picture a variation in which either party has an incentive to intentionally misstate rights so that someone gains access to something they might not otherwise be able to use, which seems to me to be at the root of a lot of such security concerns.

Also, if the supplier starts sending a new class of content and wants to apply the same licensing conditions that exist for a previous class, it would be much easier to have documents of the new class point to the existing license than to put the license through an update (approval, rollout, etc.) cycle.

>[rga] Are not all such "resource to license pointers" from a logical perspective

>merely hints, in that once located, it would be the license itself which authoritatively

>resolved whether or not it applied to the resource in question?

In my scenario, the license describes a set of conditions, and the the supplier indicates the usage conditions that apply to a document by including a pointer from the document to the license. The resolution of who's allowed to do what with the work needs no identification of the work in question, because the work is what you start with.

Perhaps I'm trying to bend a well-understood concept of what exactly constitutes a license too far to fit my needs. Still, while I always hate terminology misuse to prove a point, my real goal is figure out how to fit XrML to my industry's needs, and not the other way around--it will make XrML a lot easier to sell back at the office.

Bob DuCharme

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