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The Social and Legal Impacts of XLink

by Amy Lincicum

Dr. Dobb's Journal

According to Elliotte Harold, moderater of the "The Social and Legal

Impacts of XLink" panel at the Software Development 2000 Conference in San

Jose, California, HTML has indeed raised legal issues, but they are peanuts

compared to the issues being raised by XLink, XML, and XPointers.

Harold,who was joined by David Halstead, Simon St. Laurent, David Orchard, Walter

Perry, and Ben Trafford, went on to address the the social and political

implications of XLink, the XML linking language. XLink addresses the

shortcomings of HTML's simple hypertext model and lets the rich structure

of XML documents be fully utilized in hypertext creation and management.

While some panelists felt that XLink make the linking process far more

manageable, others, such as Trafford, felt that developer's lives would be

more interesting, but certainly not easier. "XLink introduces a level of

'hackability' that didn't previously exist," he explained. Trafford then

used Ticketmaster as an illustration of the complications that arise when

attempting to decide what legal ramifications apply where. For instance, he

said, if a user were to transclude the previous 13 pages with banner ads

leading up to the purchasing page, and link that purchasing page to his web

site, is this person now liable for lost revenue on advertising for

Ticketmaster?

Questions such as these plagued the panel while discussing

the implications of interfering with the flow of business. Perry, on the

other hand, noted that it would be possible for Ticketmaster to prevent

someone from deep linking, because, he said, the purchasing page doesn't

actually have to exist (for instance, no fixed URL).

In regard to the issue of annotation, St. Laurent said he felt that "owners

of information seem to have accepted annotation (maybe as an abridgement of

their rights) more so than inclusion (also known as theft)." Orchard then

brought up the point that while the Web makes it harder to force

producers to adhere to particular standards, it does make it easier to

track who is doing what, and thus, he said, it becomes a double-edge sword.

Patents were also a hot topic for the panel. Trafford stated that "the

patent process should be reformed to reflect the accelerated process of web

publishing." Halstead then brought up the ethical consideration that while

innovation should be rewarded, this industry is, to a degree, collective.

Trafford aggreed, and noted that though this has always been the case,

technology such as XLink has made these interdepencies more obvious.

Halstead said he thought that "the moment we are sitting in is a

fundamental juncture in the history of computing." St. Laurent agreed, and

noted that with XLink, "we're on the brink of disruption, if not

revolution." Orchard and Perry both felt that we will see much less

copyright in the future, as the focus shifts to the process behind the

presentation. And Trafford stated simply, "I don't think the chaos will be

resolved until the next generation of lawyers graduates from law school."

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