W3C

Microdata vocabularies: Licensing Works

Editor's Draft 27 October 2009

Latest Published Version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/mdwork/
Latest Editor's Draft:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/mdwork/
Editor:
Ian Hickson, Google, Inc.

Abstract

This specification defines a microdata vocabulary (an item type and associated defined property names) for marking up authorship and licensing information for works.

Status of this document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the most recently formally published revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

If you wish to make comments regarding this document, please send them to public-html-comments@w3.org (subscribe, archives) or whatwg@whatwg.org (subscribe, archives), or submit them using our public bug database. All feedback is welcome.

The working groups maintains a list of all bug reports that the editor has not yet tried to address and a list of issues for which the chairs have not yet declared a decision. The editor also maintains a list of all e-mails that he has not yet tried to address.

Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable. Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification before it eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should join the aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions.

The publication of this document by the W3C as a W3C Working Draft does not imply that all of the participants in the W3C HTML working group endorse the contents of the specification. Indeed, for any section of the specification, one can usually find many members of the working group or of the W3C as a whole who object strongly to the current text, the existence of the section at all, or the idea that the working group should even spend time discussing the concept of that section.

The latest stable version of the editor's draft of this specification is always available on the W3C CVS server and in the WHATWG Subversion repository. The latest editor's working copy (which may contain unfinished text in the process of being prepared) is also available.

There are various ways to follow the change history for the specification:

E-mail notifications of changes
HTML-Diffs mailing list (diff-marked HTML versions for each change): http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-diffs/latest
Commit-Watchers mailing list (complete source diffs): http://lists.whatwg.org/listinfo.cgi/commit-watchers-whatwg.org
Real-time notifications of changes:
Generated diff-marked HTML versions for each change: http://twitter.com/HTML5
All (non-editorial) changes to the spec source: http://twitter.com/WHATWG
Browsable version-control record of all changes:
CVSWeb interface with side-by-side diffs: http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/html5/spec/Overview.html
Annotated summary with unified diffs: http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker
Raw Subversion interface: svn checkout http://svn.whatwg.org/webapps/

The W3C HTML Working Group is the W3C working group responsible for this specification's progress along the W3C Recommendation track. This specification is the 27 October 2009 Editor's Draft.

The text of this specification is also available as part of the WHATWG's Microdata Vocabularies specification, in its Licensing Works section. This normative content of this specification and the Licensing Works section of the WHATWG specification are identical.

This specification is intended to define vocabularies for HTML5's Microdata feature to address the most important use cases for which Microdata was created. It is specified independently to allow the Microdata vocabularies to evolve independently of the HTML5 specification itself.

This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

Table of contents

  1. 1 The vocabulary
  2. 2 Conversion to RDF
  3. 3 Examples
  4. References

1 The vocabulary

This section defines a microdata vocabulary. [HTML5]

An item with the item type http://n.whatwg.org/work represents a work (e.g. an article, an image, a video, a song, etc). This type is primarily intended to allow authors to include licensing information for works.

The following are the type's defined property names.

work

Identifies the work being described.

The value must be an absolute URL.

Exactly one property with the name work must be present within each item with the type http://n.whatwg.org/work.

title

Gives the name of the work.

A single property with the name title may be present within each item with the type http://n.whatwg.org/work.

author

Gives the name or contact information of one of the authors or creators of the work.

The value must be either an item with the type http://microformats.org/profile/hcard, or text.

Any number of properties with the name author may be present within each item with the type http://n.whatwg.org/work.

license

Identifies one of the licenses under which the work is available.

The value must be an absolute URL.

Any number of properties with the name license may be present within each item with the type http://n.whatwg.org/work.

2 Conversion to RDF

For the purposes of RDF processors, blank nodes that are the subject of a triple with the predicate "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/microdata#http%3A%2F%2Fn.whatwg.org%2Fwork%23%3Awork" and the object s must be treated as if the node was identified by s.

For the purposes of RDF processors, the predicate "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/microdata#http%3A%2F%2Fn.whatwg.org%2Fwork%23%3Atitle" must be considered equivalent to the predicate "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title".

For the purposes of RDF processors, the predicate "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/microdata#http%3A%2F%2Fn.whatwg.org%2Fwork%23%3Aauthor" must be considered equivalent to the predicate "http://creativecommons.org/ns#attributionName".

For the purposes of RDF processors, the predicate "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/microdata#http%3A%2F%2Fn.whatwg.org%2Fwork%23%3Alicense" must be considered equivalent to the predicate "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#license".

3 Examples

This example shows an embedded image entitled My Pond, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License and the MIT license simultaneously.

<figure itemscope itemtype="http://n.whatwg.org/work">
 <dd><img itemprop="work" src="mypond.jpeg">
 <dt>
  <p><cite itemprop="title">My Pond</cite></p>
  <p><small>Licensed under the <a itemprop="license"
  href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/">Creative
  Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License</a>
  and the <a itemprop="license"
  href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php">MIT
  license</a>.</small>
</figure>

References

[HTML5]
HTML5, I. Hickson. WHATWG, August 2009.