Copyrighting schemas, Hailstorm

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

Clay Shirky has an article on Hailstorm up at:
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/05/30/hailstorm.html

Shirky raises copyright and control as a central issue in Microsoft's
Hailstorm strategy:

>This is the most audacious aspect of HailStorm, and the core of the
>describe-and-defend strategy. Microsoft wants to create a schema which
>describes all possible user transactions, and then copyright that
>schema, in order to create and manage the ontology of life on the
>Internet. In HailStorm as it was described, all entities, methods, and
>transactions will be defined and mediated by Microsoft or
>Microsoft-licensed developers, with Microsoft acting as a kind of
>arbiter of descriptions of electronic reality:

We've had discussions of whether copyrighting a schema has any
implications for control.  I can definitely see limitations on derived
works, which strikes me as unfortunate, but I'd really like to have a
clearer explanation from someone as to how intellectual property and XML
interact in the legal world...