Dear all,
Bob Morris recently submitted an issue [1] to the Darwin Core code site showing a potential ambiguity in the inclusion from Dublin Core of both dcterms:rights and dcterms:accessRights in the Simple Darwin Core schema [2]. The ambiguity arises from the fact that dcterms:accessRights is actually a subclass of dcterms:rights.
Looking at the Darwin Core documentation about the use of these terms, I noticed that dcterms:rights [3] suggests a license ("http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/") as an example. I think this example is an inappropriate use for the term and instead is an example of a dcterms:license.
I think it would be a good idea to add dcterms:license to the list of terms promoted by Darwin Core, especially after reading Peter Desmet's blog posts [4, 5]. If license was indeed the intent for including dcterms:rights in the first place, then perhaps it can be deprecated, leaving only its subtype dcterms:accessRights.
Discussion welcome, so that I know whether to submit an issue for these changes to the Darwin Core.
Thanks,
John
[1] https://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=196 [2] https://darwincore.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/xsd/tdwg_dwc_simple.xsd [3] http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#dcterms:rights [4] http://peterdesmet.com/posts/illegal-bullfrogs.html [5] http://www.canadensys.net/2012/why-we-should-publish-our-data-under-cc0