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The BibP Treatment of Intellectual Property: Open Metadata for Copyrighted Content |
A fundamental idea underlying bibliographic protocol is that a network of bibliographic service providers can freely provide and exchange metadata about books, articles and other documents even though those documents may generally be protected by copyright. Participants in the bibp network are expected to respect both the open metadata framework and the copyrighted content framework as described below.
Open metadata is metadata that may be freely exchanged and published, possibly subject to conditions of maintaining openness. Open metadata includes factual metadata that is not subject to copyright and interpretive metadata that is explicitly provided as open.
Basic bibliographic facts, such as the title, author, publisher and publication date of a book are the fundamental elements of bibliographic description in the bibp network. These items may always be exchanged openly.
On the other hand, interpretive metadata includes such items as written reviews, descriptions, and summaries about particular books or articles. These items represent intellectual property in their own right and are hence subject to copyright. Contribution of these items to the network requires explicit permission.
Nevertheless, when a particular review or discussion of a published work is itself published, the fact of this "review of" relationship may be provided to the network. When such a relationship is reported in a metapage for the reviewed item, it represents an opportunity for the user to be directed to appropriate services for the review.
In general, rightsholders for interpretive metadata are encouraged to contribute descriptive metadata as open metadata for free dissemination on the network. In the future, there may be provisions for restricted submission of metadata in support of indexing activities.
The copyrighted content framework requires all participants in the bibp network to respect the intellectual property rights of authors, publishers and other rightsholders. In general, bibliographic service providers are expected to to operate open metaservices for bibliographic items. In responding to a bibp request for a particular item, an open metaservice will provide a bibliographic front page for the item that may be viewed by anyone. The front page, or metapage, will typically contain the bibliographic description of the item, together with information about available services provided by the service provider directly or through external services by linking. Externally linked services should be limited to those that appropriately address intellectual property rights.