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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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