Proposal: <podcast:license>

[PofMagicfingers]

<podcast:license [url="https://urlofdetailledlicense"]>CC0</podcast:license>

This tag allow to specify at channel or item level which license uses the podcast or episode. It could be any string and an URL can be added to get more info about the license.

This is a transfered proposal from our former project podCloud/podcast-ext. See #173 for details.

[vv01f]

a piece of work could be licensed in different ways, maybe enable listing multiple licenses (thought taken from software licensing). Not sure how relevant it is, but licenses could also apply for a certain audience or in certain jurisdictions only.

[theDanielJLewis]

I like it, and I think it could replace or build on the copyright tag.

[PofMagicfingers]

I think it's a great addition, it should not replace the copyright tag, as it's not exactly the same

[jamescridland]

Could I please suggest

<copyright podcast:licence="cc-by">My Amazing Company</copyright>

I'd be really keen to avoid replacing/duplicating tags. That seems the wrong thing to do. If the intention is to clarify the licence, then that works well.

I don't quite understand how multiple licences work in a podcast context, but of course, "cc-by,another-licence" probably works.

[daveajones]

I think this is an easy win. Are there known slugs for the most common licenses, or is it free-form?

[PofMagicfingers]

I'd be really keen to avoid replacing/duplicating tags. That seems the wrong thing to do. If the intention is to clarify the licence, then that works well.

I really like the idea of keeping this neat and not duplicating concepts, but unfortunately we do not have a copyright tag for items, so using the copyright tag limit usage to the whole feed.

Having a license tag per episode could be something really useful for participative shows, multiple shows compilation feeds, and such.

Best solution here would be to extend usage of copyright to item elements as there is no way there to specify a copyright, but as far as I know there is no way to modify the existing standard tag. (and creating a podcast:copyright seems really counterproductive 😅 )

Are there known slugs for the most common licenses, or is it free-form

I do not know if there is a formal list somewhere, but at least Creative Commons has known short slugs (cc-by, cc0, cc-sa etc). I guess it would be free form.

[daveajones]

Agreed. In general I’m very supportive of tags like this that have a clear use case but may not be something that has immediate, large up-take. I think that’s fine. It can really meet someone’s niche needs (like music, audiobook, history, drama) and having it available within the spec just makes the whole thing more usable.

I can see a librivox style podcast that records public domain audiobooks, or children’s stories needing to declare their license/copyright status on a per episode basis.

I think I’ll put this in Phase 3 and create a slug list to go along with it, documenting the cc ones and trying to keep that format for the others that don’t yet have one.

[daveajones]

If someone wants to look over the slug list for the licenses, there are some in there that I'm not familiar with and may not apply to audio/video works. Also, if there are some missing please add.

[adamc199]

All my episodes contain a Creative Commons license in the mp3 data. I have used it to defend my ownership in court successfully.

[benjaminbellamy]

Hi everyone, I just stumbled on this thread.
I had written that… yesterday: https://github.com/benjaminbellamy/podcast-namespace/blob/patch-7/license/license.md
Hope it can help moving forward.

@jamescridland for once I must disagree with you: License is not "Copyright" it is so much more. It can even be the complete opposite. So it has to be another tag. #My2Cents 👛

Ben.

[jamescridland]

"Licence" can replace "Copyright", sure. But what do you do with the existing <copyright> tag then, remembering that backward compatibility is a prerequisite of any of this work?

[PofMagicfingers]

IMHO License should not replace copyright, and is not the same. Copyright state who own the rights of the content, license provide informations about how you can use the content.

[adamc199]

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/297/whats-the-difference-between-copyright-and-licensing

[benjaminbellamy]

In many countries (France is one of them) “Copyright” has no legal value. License has.
I do not think we need backward compatibility: License is something else and would only make sense as a whole new tag.

[daveajones]

Let’s move this into phase 3.

[daveajones]

PR merged to create the license.md explanation file. Will update the proposal on the main page to reference it.

[benjaminbellamy]

I am answering here to @daveajones question in #179 issue:

I thought it would be a good idea for a start to use the work lawyers already did (I have no legal skills), especially the ones who worked on Creative Commons.
The idea is to use CC licenses and make them technically obvious that any service would understand what it can do.

For instance it could be something like (this is me thinking out loud) :

<podcast:licence url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/" label="(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)">
   <podcast:licenseFeature usage="derivative" allowed="no"/>
   <podcast:licenseFeature usage="commercial" allowed="no"/>
</podcast:license>

<podcast:licence url="http://domain.tld/license.txt" label="© My Company 2021 - All Rights Reserved">
   <podcast:licenseFeature usage="derivative" allowed="no" />
   <podcast:licenseFeature usage="commercial" allowed="no" />
</podcast:license>

<podcast:licence url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/" label="(CC BY 4.0)">
   <podcast:licenseFeature usage="derivative" allowed="yes"/>
   <podcast:licenseFeature usage="commercial" allowed="yes" />
</podcast:license>

<podcast:licence url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/" label="(CC BY-SA 4.0)">
   <podcast:licenseFeature usage="derivative" allowed="share alike"/>
   <podcast:licenseFeature usage="commercial" allowed="yes" />
</podcast:license>

[daveajones]

Anyone have objections to the way this is written up on the README now?

[benjaminbellamy]

I do not have any objection.

[daveajones]

@PofMagicfingers Do you feel good about the way it stands currently?

[PofMagicfingers]

Seems good to me! 👍

[coldacid]

I'm fairly certain that there is already a list/vocabulary of licenses out there, primarily geared towards open source software for sure but probably still usable in our case. If I'm correct about this, it would be better to use that instead of reinventing the wheel with our own "license slugs" list.

UPDATE: Yep, I was right. https://spdx.org/licenses/

This is actually referred to by a number of other systems, such as the npm package manager for Javascript (which requires SPDX identifiers for its own license property in package metadata).

[daveajones]

Thanks for this. Yes, let’s link to a well known list for sure. I’ll update.

[saerdnaer]

Just a note: The spdx list has one "bug": It does not list the language specific variants for the CC licenses e.g. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/de/ ; and if you want to display the short name of the license in the official way you have to add some logic to transform

CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0

To

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

[daveajones]

How should we handle this within the spec language?

[benjaminbellamy]

I would not add language info to the license.
Either it's spdx or it's not.
#my2cents

[Inrumpo]

I'm late to the party. I came across the 1.0 specification and noticed one thing:

From the examples:

The examples are confusing copyright and license. Those are different things.

In short:

• A copyright note should answer "Who made this piece of work / is the current holder of the originator's rights?".
• A license is an (in this case pretty one sided) "agreement" that should answer "How is who allowed to use this piece of work for how long and under what conditions?".

The copyright belongs into the already existing <copyright></copyright> tag. Example:

<copyright>© 2015–2021 Game Talk FM</copyright>

I'm all for the ability to add a custom license if one desires to do so. Possible example:

<podcast:licence url="http://domain.tld/license.txt">Licensing Agreement DD-MM-YYYY</podcast:license>

[daveajones]

You’re right. I’ll take that example out. Thanks!

[ttepasse]

Prior art: RFC 4946: Atom License Extension

[coldacid]

Nice find, @ttepasse!

[daveajones]

Thanks for documenting this here!

[hugopeixoto]

SPDX defines "License expressions", which allow you to specify dual licensing or license exceptions.

SPDX expressions allow you to specify a license-ref instead of a license-id, allowing you to use a license that's not on the official SPDX list. This might be useful since spdx is focused on software, and podcasters may want to use podcast-specific licensing (that explicitly address the questions posed on the 1.0 spec proposal).

Is there any survey on what kind of licensing podcasters use / want to use? I've found that the ones I listen to either: use a CC license; have a "all rights reserved" in the copyright; don't specify anything at all.

Just a note: The spdx list has one "bug": It does not list the language specific variants for the CC licenses e.g. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/de/

SPDX does list the country specific variants, CC-BY-SA-3.0-DE is present in https://spdx.org/licenses/. Not sure why CC-BY-2.0-DE isn't on the list.

[theDanielJLewis]

Is there any survey on what kind of licensing podcasters use / want to use? I've found that the ones I listen to either: use a CC license; have a "all rights reserved" in the copyright; don't specify anything at all.

That's what I see most often, too.

[Marzal]

Hi, great idea. I have one doubt.

The namespace 1.0 says:

url: (optional) This is a url that points to the full, legal language of the license being referenced. This attribute is optional for well-known public licenses. For new, or custom licenses it is required.

But the tag companion document says otherwise:

url (required): This is the url to the license file.

Am I missing something?