Metadata

When you select a license from theCreative Commons License Chooser, you're provided with HTML to place in your page. That HTML containsmetadatawhich allows software to understand that you've applied a license to your work.

元数据是什么?

Metadatais data about data. For example: title, creator, and licensing information. When youchoose a licenseon our website, you get back some metadata (licensing information) encoded in RDF.

What is RDF?

RDF(Resource Description Framework) is a framework for metadata. The basic structure of RDF is very simple. There are three parts:

• the subject: a thing, identified by its URL
• the predicate: the type of metadata (like title or creator), also identified by a URL
• the object: the value of this type of metadata (like "The Story of My Life" or 'a person named "John Q. Public"')

它们共同构成RDF语句，这些语句用RDF/XML语言表示。

What is the Semantic Web?

TheSemantic Webis the part of the Web available in RDF. The idea behind the concept of the Semantic Web is that when enough pages carry this machine-processable metadata, developers can build tools that take advantage of it.

Among other things, RDF helps different programs talk to each other, reducing the need for users to copy information by hand. Imagine a world where everything had embedded RDF: When buying a plane ticket, for example, you could drag your flight itinerary onto your calendar program to add it to your calendar. You could drag a friend's top-ten songs list onto your music player, and it could try and obtain the songs for you automatically.

RDF还可以用于创建更强大的搜索引擎。现在，你唯一能问搜索引擎的问题是“哪些页面有这些单词?”当页面包含RDF元数据时，您将能够提出更高级的问题，如“加州当前的温度是多少?”一些程序也可以使用这些信息，比如可以显示当前天气的闹钟程序，或者只有在获得许可后才使用照片的拼贴制作程序。

最后，元数据可以在整个Web上聚合。一个程序可以下载所有排名前十的歌曲列表，在RDF格式的定价指南的帮助下，计算出购买最受欢迎专辑的成本。

Metadata holds a lot of promise, but it won't be useful until people start adding it to their pages. Creative Commons hopes to help promote metadata by making it very easy for people to add metadata to their pages.

Why we have Creative Commons Metadata

除了让人们更容易找到最适合自己的版权许可之外，知识共享还致力于提供这些许可的简单RDF描述。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析这些描述将把许可证的要点以一种便于机器处理和工作的方式表达出来。与试图限制数字作品使用的数字版权管理(DRM)技术不同，知识共享提供了鼓励允许共享和重用作品的方法。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析

If you run a search engine, you might use license metadata to highlight public domain and generously-licensed works. If you write a public file sharing server, you might offer to search the user's hard drive for works that allow distribution. If you write a magazine, you might use a CC-enabled search engine to find pictures of candy bars that you can legally include.

By standardizing a way to describe this information and providing large quantities of RDF to build on, we hope to encourage new and innovative ways to develop the commons. Of course, this metadata only provides a first approximation of the license, for information use. Users are encouraged to read the full license to make sure it meets their expectations.

CC REL Describes Creative Commons Metadata

Creative Commons metadata is described by theCreative Commons Rights Expression Language(CC REL). You can also find information on specificfiletypes用于嵌入和读取元数据。