Re: Copyrighting schemas, Hailstorm

[ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)]

"Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com> writes:

> 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...

Shirky's worry doesn't fit with my understanding of copyright.  A
copyright is not a patent.  A work must clearly be derived _in its
expression_, not its substance, from the original, to be an infringing
derivative.  Otherwise for example no songs about, well, almost
anything, would be publishable.

IANAL.

ht
-- 
  Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
          W3C Fellow 1999--2001, part-time member of W3C Team
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