- re-transmission is OK with proper credit to the author (unless the info is explicitely labeled as public);
- re-sale of info is OK with permission of the author (unless public).
To back this up one could envisage:
- introducing standard labels (for each mime type) which indicate whether the info is public, and if not, point to the author;
- making browsers "label-aware", so they can show the content of the label when displaying text, pictures and movies;
- adopting the convention/rule that info cannot be copied without the label;
- (a bit more adventurous) setting up an ISPN (international standard person number), similar to ISBN (international standard book number) and ISSN (international standard serial number), which identifies a person, so that references to authors in the labels are less dependent on changes in e-mail addresses and home pages (as long as people keep their addresses in the ISPN database up-to-date, of course).
= What practical solutions would you suggest for the growth of a multilingual
Web?
- At the author end: better education of web authors to use combinations of modalities to make communication more effective across language barriers (and not just for cosmetic reasons);
- at the server end: more translation facilities à la AltaVista (quality not impressive, but always better than nothing);