Re: Meta Tag - proposal (suggestions ???)

Brian Behlendorf (brian@organic.com)
Fri, 17 Nov 1995 03:27:34 -0800 (PST)


On Thu, 16 Nov 1995, Jon Wallis wrote:
> How about somewhere becoming a "copyright library" for the Web? Web authors
> would be required to supply their URL to this site, which would then
> classify and catalogue the page (for fee).
> <take tongue out of cheek>

Actually what I think we will see are publishers which offer "permanent"
archives for documents, which serve two purposes:

1) A long-lived URL for future reference, no matter what happens to the
admistrative and/or logistical infrastructure surrounding the original
author/publisher.

2) A legal asset which is validated by its datestamp and submitter
(either through a public key or some out-of-band verification) and thus
stands as proof of existance for copyright and contractual reasons.

"Permanent" as in, its archive is protected by a trust fund of some sort
or a government-backed insurance policy, sort of like the FDIC insurance
for banks. In other words, this database will survive, much like how
graveyards survive even in urban areas because a sufficiently large trust
fund was able to provide rent and sustenance through interest earned.

There are other non-html issues surrounding this like public key crypto,
URN's, URC's, etc, so I don't expect too much conversation about this on
this list...

Joe english writes:
> Here's a thought: how about using the Usenet newsgroup hierarchy as a
> classification scheme? I.e., "if this Web page were a Usenet article,
> in which newsgroup(s) would it belong?"

Are you crazy? Usenet as a model hierarchical classification scheme?
bwahaha. Ack - sorry. I think a lot more success would had using simple
keywords. To accomplish what you want, though, it would seem like a
variant of the <LINK> tag, which is designed for use as a "this document
is related to this other document"-ish expression. Not a direct link,
but something user-agents could use in interesting ways....

Brian

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