James,

You may wish to look at,  XrML - eXtensible rights Markup Language - is 
the Digital Rights Language of choice. XrML provides a universal method 
for securely specifying and managing rights and conditions associated 
with all kinds of resources including digital content as well as services.

http://www.xrml.org/about.asp

grant

James Adams wrote:

> Just had a thought for a useful application of XML to the online 
> copyright arena and wanted to get some feedback.  I do graphic/website 
> design for a living and find that I spend a lot of my time creating 
> and requesting written approvals for the use of other people's 
> copyrighted materials.  This tends to delay my ability to publish site 
> updates that have been completed but are awaiting written approval or 
> renewal.  To give an example, I maintain the website for a day-spa 
> that recently decided to add a page listing the companies whose 
> products they use at the spa.  Each product manufacturer has a little 
> section on the page that has their logo, some marketing text, and a 
> link to the manufacturer's website.  In order to make sure I'm covered 
> in case of a copyright infringement lawsuit, I need to keep on file a 
> written letter of approval from each manufacturer that states I have 
> their permission to use that particular set of images and text on that 
> particular page.  I know for a fact that in this particular case every 
> one of the manufacturers viewed and verbally approved the work within 
> two days of completion, but several of them took two or three weeks to 
> send me the documentation.  There are several problems with doing 
> things this way:
>
> 1. You are at the mercy of the copyright owner with regard to the 
> language and terms of the written approval unless they agree to use a 
> document that you have written.  I find that often they do not do a 
> very good job of specifying which materials you can use or on which 
> sections of the site they can be used.
>
> 2. They almost always include a clause requiring that you request a 
> new approval if you change anything on that page. To stay within the 
> law, this means I have to request a new approval just to fix a typo or 
> a link.
>
> 3. It is difficult for other employees at either company that were not 
> involved in the original approval process to tell if the material is 
> in compliance, since all they have to work with is the date on the 
> approval letter and what is currently on the site.
>
> I think it would be extremely useful to have a standardized way of 
> handling these approvals and proofs of approval, and XML seems like 
> the perfect tool for the job.  What I am thinking is that every image 
> or chunk of text within a website whose copyright owner is external 
> would be wrapped in some sort of identifying tag.  The site could then 
> have an XML file that lists things like the date of approval, 
> copyright owner, duration of the approval (when it has to be reviewd 
> again), etc.  I'm thinking that the whole system should work in a 
> manner similar to security certificates, so that a third-party web 
> service can verify / issue approval certificates.  If anybody has any 
> thoughts, I would love to hear them.  Maybe there is already something 
> out there that handles these issues?
>
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