March 01, 2000
The Social and Legal Impacts of XLinkAmy Lincicum
According to Elliotte Harold, moderater of the "The Social and Legal Impacts of XLink" panel, HTML has indeed raised legal issues, but they are peanuts compared to the issues being raised by XLink, XML, and XPointers.
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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