Network Working Group                                           J. Snell
Internet-Draft                                                 July 2005
Expires: January 2, 2006


                       Feed License Link Relation
                draft-snell-atompub-feed-license-00.txt

Status of this Memo

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).

Abstract

   This memo presents a mechanism that allows feed publishers to
   associate copyright licenses with feeds and entries.










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Table of Contents

   1.   Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.   Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.   The 'license' link relation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   4.   Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   5.   IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   6.   References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
        Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   A.   Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
        Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 6








































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1.  Introduction

   This document specifies a mechanism that allows the feed publishers
   the ability to associate copyright licenses with feeds and entries.
   Licenses associated with feeds and entries using these mechanisms MAY
   or MAY not be machine readable and are intended to communicate the
   various rights and obligations others may have with regards to given
   resource.

2.  Notational Conventions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, [RFC2119], as
   scoped to those conformance targets.

   In this specification, "entry" refers to an atom:entry element.

   In this specification, "feed" refers to an Atom Feed Document.

   In this specification, "head section" refers to the children of a
   feed's document-wide metadata container; e.g., the child elements of
   the atom:feed element in an Atom Feed Document.

   In this specification, "link" refers to the atom:link element.

   In this specification, "link relation" refers to the value of the
   atom:link element's rel attribute.

3.  The 'license' link relation

   The 'license' link relation is used to identify a copyright license
   for Atom Feed and Atom Entry Documents.

   o  atom:entry elements MAY contain exactly one 'license' link
      relations.
   o  atom:feed elements MAY contain exactly one 'license' link
      relations.
   o  atom:source elements MAY contain exactly one 'license' link
      relations.
   o  If an atom:entry element does not contain any 'license' link
      relations, any 'license' link relations of the contained atom:
      source are considered to apply
   o  In an Atom Feed Document, if an atom:entry element or a contained
      atom:source element do not contain any 'license' link relations,
      any 'license' link relations feed head section are considered to
      apply.




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   For example
     <feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
       <id>http://www.example.com/myfeed</id>
       <title>My Example Feed</title>
       <updated>2005-07-28T12:00:00Z</updated>
       <link href="http://www.example.com/myfeed" />
       <link rel="license"
             type="text/html"
             href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/" />
       <author><name>James</name></author>
       <entry>
         <id>tag:entries.com,2005:1</td>
         <title>My original entry</title>
         <link href="http://www.example.com/entries/1" />
         <summary>This is my original entry</summary>
       </entry>
     </feed>

4.  Security Considerations

   Feeds using the mechanisms described here could be crafted in such a
   way as to cause a consumer to initiate excessive (or even an unending
   sequence of) network requests, causing denial of service (either to
   the consumer, the target server, and/or intervening networks).  This
   risk can be mitigated by requiring user intervention after a certain
   number of requests, or by limiting requests either according to a
   hard limit, or with heuristics.

5.  IANA Considerations

   This specification defines one new Atom link relation type to be
   registered in the IANA Registry of Link Relation as defined by
   [I-D.ietf-atompub-format].
       Attribute Value: license
       Description: (see section 3)
       Expected display characteristics: (see section 3)
       Security considerations: (see section 4)

6.  References

   [I-D.ietf-atompub-format]
              Sayre, R. and M. Nottingham, "The Atom Syndication
              Format", draft-ietf-atompub-format-10 (work in progress),
              July 2005.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.




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   [W3C.REC-xml-infoset-20040204]
              Tobin, R. and J. Cowan, "XML Information Set (Second
              Edition)", W3C REC REC-xml-infoset-20040204,
              February 2004.


Author's Address

   James M Snell


   Phone:
   Email: jasnell@gmail.com
   URI:   http://snellspace.com

Appendix A.  Acknowledgements

   The author gratefully acknowledges the feedback from the members of
   Atom Publishing Format and Protocol working group during the
   development of this specification.































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Intellectual Property Statement

   The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
   Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
   pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
   this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
   might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
   made any independent effort to identify any such rights.  Information
   on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
   found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
   assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
   attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
   such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
   specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
   http://www.ietf.org/ipr.

   The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
   copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
   rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
   this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF at
   ietf-ipr@ietf.org.


Disclaimer of Validity

   This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
   OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
   ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
   INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
   INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
   WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).  This document is subject
   to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
   except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.


Acknowledgment

   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.




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