On XML.com, Kendall Clark gives a clear and accessible review of the semantic web transition, then criticizes our own RDF metadata strategy, specifically. It’s useful and insightful feedback, so we’ve taken the time to respond at length here. (If you’re not familiar with RDF or the semantic web, or why they’re important to our mission,…

“A Kafkaesque state of affairs has effectively closed off access to thousands of old movies, books and pieces of music because the copyright owners can’t be located.” From a nice article about Creative Commons and content licensing by Sarah Lai Stirland in the Seattle Times.

Innovative content licensing seems to be catching on — even beyond the efforts of Creative Commons. Prentince Hall PTR recently announced that they’ll publish a series of technical books under open-content licenses. Read the Slashdot story. Kudos to Bruce Perens for brokering the move, and to Prentice Hall for joining O’Reilly and Associaties in the…