[odrl-version2] Comments on ODRL 2 April 16 2008 Specification

[Steven Rowat]

Greetings,

Here are some comments on the April 16 "Koblenz" specification.

First, the overall flow diagram Figure 2.1 is gratifyingly easy to
follow, and sections 2.1, "Rights", and 2.2, "Asset" are simple and
clear. And in fact the whole thing seems much improved by the
streamlining. Thank you.

However here are some problems I have with theory or understanding
specific sections:

Section 2.2.1:
   The word "state" has not been defined at this point in the document;
so I do not have a reference for what is meant by "No state is
transferred from the rights in the Parent Asset to the Child Asset".
Does this mean the actual values of the parameters of the Prohibition or
Permission that is inherited?

Section 2.3, Party:

      a) I fail to understand two things about Party "consumers" vis a
vis Prohibitions and Permissions, ie.:
          i) When the Assignee represents a group of people, why is only
"Permissions" mentioned, and not both "Prohibitions and Permissions" (as
is specified in the following paragraph about a group who are all
Assignees: "Each member of the group receives the same set of
Permissions and Prohibitions")?
         ii) Just as importantly, I don't understand what happens in the
first,  Assignee/group case, - how can an Assignee get Prohibitions and
Permissions while representing a group, and yet "one member of the group
receives the set of Permissions." This seems contradictory - what is the
point of the Assignee "representing" the group if the Permissions (and
Prohibitions?) don't apply to the other people in the group?

Related Suggestion: might it not be worthwhile to use "Party" to refer to
single-person Assignations, and a word like "Group" or "Entity" for
individuals who represent groups, or the groups/corporations themselves?
Because:
   i) Even just reading section 2.3 as it stands I found to be
difficult, with the
word "Party" playing several roles, some singular and some plural.
  ii) Surely there will continue to be actual physical, as well as core
semantic, differences in how interactions will be played out between
groups/corporations as opposed to between individuals. It might be best
to have two different names to track this right from the start.

2.6 Constraint
--I recall a discussion in which it was suggested (by Vickie?) that
lists of humans or possibly other language information be available for
Constraints. This does not seem possible from my reading of this
section; it still seem only mathematical. Was this discussed at Koblenz?
What was the result of that discussion? Is it addressed elsewhere in the
V2 specification, ie., is there another way to exclude certain
parties/groups from engaging in the interaction, if the Assigner so chooses?

2.7 Duty
     a) The first paragraph is difficult without a diagram; thank God
for Figure 2.1! At very least, "See Figure 2.1" would be useful to have
at the end of this paragraph (since eventually people might arrive here
by hyperlink, just looking at "Duty", and not see Figure 2.1). And
perhaps some of this information could come after the bulleted point list,
in order to ease the reader into the situation.
     b) It would seem there should be an arrow link, or some kind of
link, on Figure 2.1, between Action and Object, according to this sentence:
"Action (mandatory). Indicates the operation (e.g. payment) that must be
performed on the Object entity."

3.3 Rights Exclusivity
I'm not sure of the use context for this. Is it meant to imply
prohibition, by default, for all others who are not given RE?

The rest seems clear and straightforward, congratulations!


Finally, here are a few typos/spelling I saw, which make comprehension
slightly harder than necessary and I think should be corrected:

--Section 2.2: I believe "the asset who rights" is a typo, and should
have read "whose" rights.
--Section 2.2.1:  I assume that "... it is added the set of rights for
the Child Asset." is accidentally missing the word "to", i.e. ,
"...added [to] the set of rights...".
--Section 2.3: typos with double "ss" on [Permissionss and Prohibitionss]


Best Regards,

Steven Rowat