[tdwg-content] dcterms:rights, dcterms:accessRights, and dcterms:license in Darwin Core

[John Wieczorek]

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