Re: [kGen] RE: [kEv] Universal Metadata - everybody's doing it...

[Martin Springer <swann@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gordon,

I agree with you that standards don't make sense for metadata
describing the meaning users assign to content. You may call a song
"Motown" and I may call it "Soul" and we can both be right. 

On the other hand there are fields where standards for metadata make
sense - for instance if these metadata describe an interface of a
device. You may call a pole positive and I may call it
negative. Though a philosopher would claim that we can both be right
many engineers would disagree. 

Leonardo Chiariglione defines standardisation as [1]

 the process by which individuals of a group recognise the advantage
 of all doing certain things in an agreed way and codify that
 agreement.

Metadata for distributing content include metadata about the copyright
(licenses). Legal agreements (contracts) between people who exchange
content should be based on a common understanding about the meaning of
the legal terms. If users use devices to exchange copyrighted content
the standardisation of the legal terms makes sense. 

Maybe ACAP is a good deal less ambitious than Kendra, but I can
interprete it correctly what they try to achieve is not wrong. Mark
Bide from ACAP has posted some comments on my blog [2]. 

Please let me know the URL of your posting.

Cheers, 
Martin

[1] http://www.chiariglione.org/ride/need_for_standards.htm
[2] http://camorra.org/swann/2007/03/01/publishers-drm/

"JG Rae" <jgr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> This is an interesting development, but the first thing I read on their
> website was
>
> "It's hard for anyone to make content available for access and use on the
> network without any rules."
>
> Actually, guys, it isn't hard at all. I remember designing EDI standards in
> the 80's, and in those days it was a real slog, but one of the great
> innovations of Web 2.0 is doing metadata by tagging, instead of by
> taxonomies. If I call something "Motown" and you call it "soul", we don't
> have to have a committee meeting to decide who's right. We can both be
> right, because both tags give a positive response to different questions. 
>
> Metadata for distributing content online is about answering "Please may
> I..." questions, as opposed to "What is..." questions. Kendra has always
> been well-placed in that respect, thanks to Daniel's initial slogan of "I
> want stuff I like and I want to be able to pay for it" and we are quite
> lucky that the paradigm is catching up with the attitude.  
>
> I think it's quite important that the Metadata Summit asks people "what do
> we want to do, that we think better metadata is going to help us do?" I
> won't enlarge on that here, in case not everybody's following this thread,
> but I will post something on the morning (UK morning).
>
> Having read a little deeper into their FAQ, it turns out ACAP are trying to
> develop something to replace the robots.txt protocol so that sites can allow
> conditional access for search engines accessing text-based media. That's a
> good deal less ambitious than Kendra's signposting, discovery and
> syndication. Their FAQ is very defensive; it's all about how it's not a
> defensive move to stop Google. 
>
> Regards, Gordon
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-k-events@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-k-events@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Daniel Harris
> Sent: 01 March 2007 08:40
> To: k-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; k-events@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [kEv] Universal Metadata - everybody's doing it...
>
> Take a look at what Jollyon sent me...
>
> ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) is a joint initiative by the World
> Association of Newspapers, the International Publishers Association and the 
>
>
>

-- 
Martin Springer         GPG-ID  1024D/23058565	
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