[rights-requirements] Some proposed topics for Aug. 28

[Aaron Burstein <burstein@boalthall.berkeley.edu>]

Hari et al. --

We have several items we would like placed on the agenda for tomorrow's 
call. 

During last week's call, several subcommitte members requested 
clarification of the terms used by Hari to parse the requirements. In 
particular, concern was raised over the distinction between domain and 
core requirments and the apparently inconsistent application of the 
definitions to seemingly similar requirements.

During last week's conference call, some subcommittee members urged us 
to understand the expressions that "the core" allows. We have assumed 
that "the core" is the XrML Core 2.1 Specification. Based on this 
assumption, we have identified changes, both additions and 
subtractions, that our requirements call for. We are preparing change 
requests accordingly. One such change request is the addition of a core 
"claim right" element that is on equal footing with the "grant right." 
Such a right is "common to all" domains and is necessary to ensure that 
appropriate extensions can be accomodated.

Using our understanding of these definitions, we extracted from our 
submission 25 requirements, 22 of which qualify as "core" 
requirements.(Analysis attached.) By contrast, Hari's analysis revealed 
only 6 requirements, 5 of which are "domain." We reviewed other 
requirements submissions and found that our analyses of those were 
substanitally different from Hari's.

For example, OEBF requirement 2.5.1 states, "No rights unless explicitly 
granted" and is said to be a core requirement encompassing both RL and 
system requirements. 
By contrast, the reworded SBL requirement 3 states, "The rights language 
shall be able to express permissions associated with the fair use 
doctrine of the US Copyright Act" and is considered a domain 
requirement, presumably because of its reference to a particular law. 

These requirements make structurally identical demands on the REL. The 
SBL requirement merely invokes a familiar doctrine as a way of 
summarizing a likely approach to rights expression that is common to 
all domains. This fits the definition of a core architectural 
requirement, not a domain requirement. Perhaps these differences are 
attributable to the lack of detailed, operational definitions of the 
"core," "domain," "system" and "rights language" (RL) categories.

We feel that fairness and consistency will suffer if we, as a 
subcommittee, fail to arrive at a common understanding of the 
definitions of the categories, and of how they have
been applied to the current submissions.

A place to start in this effort would be to see a parsing of the XrML 
2.1 Core and Standard Extension into the form that Hari has offered for 
other requirements.

We look forward to discussing these points tomorrow.

Aaron Burstein
Dean Rowan
------------------
Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic
http://www.samuelsonclinic.org/

Attachment: sltppc_reqs_analysis_20020827.xls
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