Finally trying to implement PREMIS Rights here has raised all sorts of
interesting questions. I wonder if others have encountered the same issues.
1. We very much miss having a generalizable way to link to documentation
for the rightsBasis. There is a specialized way to link to a license;
however there is no analogous way to link to a statute or to external
copyright information. We would prefer a general rightsBasisDocumentation
(or something like that) linking identifier with a type and value rather
than specialized ones for each suggested rightsBasis value, both for
simplicity of programming and to support rights basis values other than
those suggested.
2. The way I read PREMIS, there's no legitimate way to express a time
period associated with a restriction, except in a backhanded kind of
way. termOfGrant is explicitly defined as "time period for the permissions
granted." So if you want to express an embargo period, you must express it
in terms of when the permission is granted, i.e. when the restriction does
not apply. I know some PREMIS adopters are using termOfGrant to mean term
of restriction, but this makes me uncomfortable, given the definition of
the element. Given that usage, if there are both term of grant and term of
restrictions to be recorded, one would need to have separate rightsGranted
statements, one for the act and one for the act with restriction, in order
to associate the term dates appropriately.
3. The question has been raised here about the need to version rights
information, i.e. if different statutes or licenses come govern an object
over time, do we want to know which were in effect when? This is distinct
from the dates associated with individual rights provisions.
4. Defining rightsGranted as "The action(s) that the granting agency has
allowed the repository" makes it awkward to express restrictions where no
right has in fact been granted. It ends up coming out as rightsGranted --
NOT. Not sure what the correct approach is. For us, we need to think of it
as a "right governed by the rightsBasis", or something like that.
We'd love to hear if others have run up against these issues, or if we're
looking at it the wrong way.
Thanks,
--Robin
Robin Wendler
Harvard University Library
Office for Information Systems
90 Mt. Auburn St.
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
617-495-3724 (W)
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