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RE: Semantic Web

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Guy Murphy <guy-murphy@e...>
• Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 09:08:54 -0500

I'm not sure it protects that much.  Still, you
have stepped precisely into the area that the 
misappropriation remedy tries to address.
Downtranslation ups the cost of the sweat of 
the brow to recreate the original sources using 
technical means  in an attempt to protect the 
property owner from misappropriation through 
other technical means.

When we side step a moral issue to emphasize 
a commercial issue, we are on precisely the 
same course which Elizabeth I set the English 
privateers on:  pillage in the name of the Queen. 
If we measure her success, it was successful.  Note 
that she later beheaded some of these same 
captains of *industry* when the political winds 
changed and she needed legitimacy in the eyes 
of the world.  Governments are fickle.

International courts try to sort this stuff out 
every day.  Misappropriation theory is a 
US court-based theory.  Canadian courts, for example, don't 
subscribe to it.   But it only took five minutes 
to find it; there are probably other precedents 
that could be raised if there were sufficient 
cause or motivation.  The spectre of the 
Semantic Web may actually force this given 
that authority over ontologies is a hot issue 
and most reasonable minds are pursuing 
service-based systems instead. 

Len
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Guy Murphy [mailto:guy-murphy@e...]

One might want to "down translate" in order to protect information resources
that have commercial value.

When this issue originaly cropped up on the XSLT mailing list with regard to
XSL:FO, I coined the term "semantic firewall".

It's a *really* big issue for a lot of information providers (at the time I
was working for Dialog, a provider of fat news feeds for corporates). You
want the raw XML feed... pay [extra] for it.

I'm not making a personal comment here as to the rights and wrongs of this
practice (trying to avoid a moral discourse, which would simply reproduce
old polarised arguments), simply reminding people of an important commercial
consideration in this area.

XSL:FO it should be noted is really good for this purpose, but HTML+CSS
isn't bad either, with XML+CSS fitting being a reasonable compromise.

For the semantic Web to work it has to acknowledge and facilitate this
process, or it'll simply be side-stepped.

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