Title: RE: [rights-examples] ln00x use case discussion
(First, in response to another message you sent)
>Another interesting thing people have proposed (that you might
be
>interested in) is the use of "resource classes". In this
instance,
>each resource indicates which resource class they are in.
Licenses
>are then written for "any resource" in a specific class.
In essence,
>the licenseId approach is an example of a resource class
approach
>where the resource classes are defined by a particular license
id.
>You can expand this, though, to make a generic resource class id
with
>the advantage being that you can later issue new licenses refering
to
>that generic resource class without having to go find each
resource
>and update it to include the new license id. The way you
would do
>this is similar to the example above but with a couple words
after
>mySystem changed.
Yes,
this sounds like a good fit for some of the scenarios I have in mind. Where can
I find out more?
(In
response to what you wrote below)
Your
concept of assignment definitely comes closer to what I had in mind than your
concept of role. "Platinum member" is a good example, to represent "any customer
who has paid for a particular plan." (As with DirectTV--my family has access to
the Boomerang channel because we pay for the Premium Plus plan; when we were on
the Premium plan, we didn't, and couldn't watch Droopy Dog, Huckleberry Hound,
etc.)
In
addition to "all customers who paid for a certain plan," customer class "c10012"
could also represent "all customers accessing our system from a particular
domain." A corporate client such as a law firm may have worked out a site
license deal, and we know that all customers coming from a specified domain do
have access to products A, B, and C but not to D or E.
So,
that being the case, what would be the best XrML 2.1 way to express the
following element from your example?
> <any principal who is a platinum
member/>
thanks,
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: DeMartini, Thomas
[mailto:]
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002
11:07 PM
To: 'DuCharme, Bob (LNG)';
''
Subject: RE: [rights-examples]
ln00x use case discussion
Something you said (about not being interested in assigning
people to classes) made me wonder if we each are talking about the same thing
when we say principalClass. There are at least two kinds of principal
classes I can envision. One I will call a principal "role"; the other, a
principal "assignment". I don't really want to debate the terms "role" and
"assignment" (and if they get in the way, lets use "foo" and "bar"), but my goal
is to provide a framework for distinguishing between at least two of the
interpretations I have in my head for "class".
Lets take principal "role" first. This is something that
"falls out" from principal interaction rather than being something written
down. For instance, I am a speaker when I speak, a writer when I write, a
consumer when I consume, and a distributor when I distribute.
Principal "assignment", on the other hand, is something that is
"assigned" to some principal by some other principal for some (possibly
arbitrary) reason. For instance, when I see a farmer farm, I may assign
him to the group of "farmers". Another person may assign people to the
group of "farmers" based upon seeing a title showing the person's ownership of
farm land. A person may get the assignment "author of Great Expectations"
by showing the same to a publisher who trusts him and getting his name on it
during publication. A person may get the assignment "sir" by being
bestowed it by some royalty. Numerous other assignments are possible:
subscriber, employee, student, "platinum club member", "economy class", adult,
"legal consumer", individual, business, citizen, and so on.
Now lets analyze the reason I make this distinction. If http://www.lexisnexis.com/whatever/c10012 is a principal
"role" (as defined above), for, say, consumer, then it means "any principal who
consumes". Suppose we have a way to say this, then a pseudo-grant might
look like this:
<grant>
<any principal
who consumes/>
<consume/>
<theText/>
</grant>
(any principal who consumes can consume the text) which is
actually the same as this:
<grant>
<any
principal/>
<consume/>
<theText/>
</grant>
(any principal can consume the text). In other words,
because "roles", by definition, "fall out" of interactions, we need only specify
the rights to be given. For instance:
<grant>
<distributor/>
<issue/>
<grant>
<any
principal/>
<consume/>
<theText/>
</grant>
</grant>
can equally well be read as "the distributor can issue a grant
saying anyone can consume the text" or "the distributor can issue a grant saying
any consumer can consume the text" because, by definition, any principal
exercising the consume right will be in the consumer principal
"role".
On the other hand, lets us investigate principal
"assignments". To be parallel with the preceeding example, think of
"authorized consumer" or "platinum member". In the case of principal
"assignments" there is a very big difference between saying
<grant>
<any
principal/>
<consume/>
<theText/>
</grant>
(any principal can consume the text) and saying
<grant>
<any principal
who is a platinum member/>
<consume/>
<theText/>
</grant>
(any platinum member can consume the text). The status of
platinum membership does not fall out of the act of consuming. Rather, the
status of platinum membership is "assigned" to certain principals. In this
case, it is of utmost importance for the clarity of granted rights that the
granter cares about how principals get "assigned" the status of platinum
membership. For instance, does the distributor do it? a trusted
third party? the author? some guy out of his garage?
&Thomas.
