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Abstract
In order to make money from information standardisation awareness concerning legal issues as well as cost structures is a necessity. Of course, commercial interests do not govern every organisation involved in Extensible Markup Language (XML)-related projects. Nevertheless, cost is a critical factor in today’s information market.
The information standardisation process is on-going and has matured over the years. It covers a wide variety of topics and interest groups. Although striving for global applicability, many initiatives are clearly characterised by their national origin. The XML.org registry encompasses over two-hundred submissions divided into more than forty different categories. But one aspect is consistently ignored in many of the entries, and that is the legal aspects of these proposed vocabularies.
The cost structure of a vocabulary-defined as the expected cost involved in implementation and interpretation-is determined not only by technical aspects, but also by legal and organisational ones. We argue that the introduction of a legal perspective in the process of information standardisation is essential for making many of the standards profitable.
We have analysed a subset of the different standards (one from each category) in order to establish which standards would require legal analysis and what such an analysis ought to focus on. More precisely, we recognize legal issues relating to intellectual property rights, privacy protection, liability, financial law, and so forth.
A major point in our presentation is the business incentive of eliminating unnecessary legal costs associated with poor vocabulary design. In response to this manifested need for legal awareness, we present the on-going development of a legal reviewing process in Legal Information Standards Action - network (LISA). Its purpose is to make available to vocabulary groups legal reviews of their proposals in a research environment with the prospect of ensuring higher quality and more widespread usability.
Keywords
Table of Contents
Information Standards (IS) is a core feature of today’s global Internet world, which involves private enterprises as well as public authorities and citizens. The prospect of IS is to support information management in terms of data processing, retrieval, communication, and documentation. The time perspective is an important aspect of this field of modern Information Technology (IT). Sometimes instant data exchange is required, other times the goal is long term archival of version dependent text entities. In this context, the independency of technical platforms in combination with customized applications is a clear success factor. Nevertheless, certain critical factors cannot be disregarded, and the legal implications of information standards is one that deserves particular attention.
For instance, XML has a strong potential to function as a lever and a sound basis for legal document management in a digital environment. The application of XML and related standards may improve recall and precision in the context of legal information retrieval, support e-contracting, meet legal requirements of information security, and so forth. Though from a legal point of view, it is not a trivial task to decide upon a schema or DTD-design as it gives rise to questions concerning authorisations to interpret and decide upon structural components of law that might have an impact on future legal assessments. Furthermore, a decision to go beyond structural markup and insert contents markup, or hypertext links for that matter, indicating similar decided cases, governing superior legal rules, and so forth, clearly challenges the conventional means of legal information supply. At the same time it adds a kind of value that users, to a growing extent, are expecting from service providers.
The introduction of information standards also has a profound impact on substantive law itself. For instance, XML messaging quite often comprises personal data processing that, in a legal sense, requires consent from data subjects in order to be legitimately collected, stored and disseminated (see the EC Data Protection Directive, 95/46/EC).[1] Furthermore, modern e-business models make it necessary to consider information duties, for example, the identity of a service provider must be clarified according to the EC Directive on E-Commerce (see 2000/31/EC). Liability issues are also relevant in terms of analysing of who is responsible for damages that emerge as a result of the abuse of a transferred authentication based on XML-signatures. Security and liabilities are other related issues that come to mind [BE 2000].
XML-related efforts of standardisation are now under way worldwide.[2] The work in this area is promising and will probably have a great impact on the growth of e-commerce and related activities. Still there are some areas where the work could benefit from a few changes. One such area is the incorporation of legal analysis into the work with vocabularies.
It is our belief that many of the projects now under way would benefit from legal analysis and examination of potential difficulties at an early stage. Traditionally, law has acted out a supporting role, which is less successful [ME 1998].
This paper was not conceived by two lawyers´ newly born interest for information standards in the Internet era. On the contrary, the theme of this paper is a natural step in our professional profiles, which are based on more than 20 years´ practical and theoretical experience of designing, developing and using information systems of different kinds. Among previous works, mention can be made of our studies on automated legal decision making [MA 1992], critical factors in legal document management withStandard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) in focus [MA 1998], XML in the context of information security [MA 2002] and XML-related intellectual property objects [MA 2000].
The design of e-commerce-related vocabularies and issues pertaining to trust in relation to the modular hierarchical models of XML have also been the object of our studies [LU 2000] [LU 2001].
Historically, law making institutions and courts represent fundaments in the legal infrastructure. Considering the rapid development of information communication technologies, it is, however, no surprise that the law, so to speak, lags behind. This necessitates practical, technical means in order to come to terms with, for instance, copyright infringements. This is no doubt a step forward in an otherwise frustrating state of affairs. What is lacking, though, is a legal qualitative assurance.
Our strong belief is that now is the right time to seek alternative arenas for legal assessments in digital environments. Conventionally, law has functioned retrospectively as a conflict-solving mechanism when things have already gone wrong. This is not appropriate to the need for proactive law that characterises today’s information society. With the expected strong growth of web services, this has also been the subject of other researchers´ efforts [RE 2002].
In response to a manifested need for legal consensus [AN 1997] concerning chosen approaches, which of course is a fiction per se, we have over the years come to the conclusion that lawyers need to take up a new role in the shaping of law. More precisely, legal expertise ought to be offered by way of legal reviewing of information standards of different kinds.
An important point to be made in this context is the need to go beyond formalised representation of normative organs, such as parliamentary bodies, governmental institutions, public authorities, and so forth. This is not to say, that legal experts working in these organisations would be disqualified from the legal reviewing process that we suggest. It is just that practical experiences over the past decades have shown too many failed attempts to take advantage of information standards, both at a national level, and in communities such as the European Union, due to various constraints burdening offical organs [KL 2002] [PA 2002] [RE 2002]. Instead, the important factor is to capture true legal expertise in terms of in-depth understanding of the interaction of law and IT, both in terms of methodological issues and substantive law.
A parallel may in fact be made with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) approach and its normative effect without being heavily institutionalised. No doubt it is a true challenge merely to attempt to mirror this approach. Nevertheless, we are convinced that this is a worthwhile strategy that requires further investigation.
The focus of this paper is a business approach to information standards that recognize legal issues and cost structures in XML-related projects as critical factors. This awareness gives rise to a need to review XML-based vocabularies from a legal point of view in order to avoid economical constraints. This is a practical task founded on the theoretical framework of law and informatics. In Section 2 of this paper a methodological approach is presented taking legal quality, legal usability and legal coherence into consideration.
A first study object of this reviewing model has been the XML.org registry in which one project from each category has been chosen to estimate its legal relevance. Section 3 boils down to the conclusion that a legal framework for legal analysis would contribute to the businesses prospects of information standards.
Section 4 presents the evolving LISA that takes responsibility for sharing information about the legal implications of information standards. Major means and methods for LISA are to produce legal reviews of information standards and to contribute to on-going debates as well as to support legal system design activities.
The structure and growth of this network is in itself a part of the review process we advocate, since we believe that it is important to have a broad and far reaching entrenchment in the legal as well as the technical communities, in order to accomplish the task set forth.
The concluding Section 5 of this paper places an emphasis on the benefits of enhancing legally-founded trust in the use of information standards.
Reviewing XML-based vocabularies is complex work. In terms of professional skills, it requires a sufficient command of law as well as of information technology. In practice, real life experiences from system design, and development from an organisational point of view is also important. As regards the legal competence it can be divided into two kinds of intervening expertise. One has to do with the methodology as regards the digitally-oriented management of legally relevant information. The other concerns substantive law issues that a vocabulary gives rise to. In this context it is important to underline that no singular lawyer is capable of having command of every legal field. In fact, law may be concecived as an umbrella concept for different fields, such as tax law, intellectual property rights, criminal law, contract law, and so forth. And, similar to the world of medicine, a patient would not expect a surgeon to be an expert on skin diseases...
This implies a need for differentiated reviews (see Figure 1 below). At the first level, the purpose would be to indicate the mere existence of legal issues. At the second level of review a more in depth analysis would reveal more precise legal questions that need to be considered. A the third level one migth offer an in-depth analysis of applicable rules and regulations within the legal framework of e-commerce.
We define legal quality by determining whether a studied project isl legal. If a Document Type Definition (DTD) or schema contains fields that, for instance, are meant for the processing of sensitive personal data, the legal quality would be deemed insufficient or dubious. The legality of the vocabulary or project is determined by examining relevant law.
This work would in practice require a disclaimer before being made public because valid applicable law is often a question that can only be answered by a court. Considering the previously discussed need for proactive legal assessments, we nevertheless conceive this approach as an important contribution to what may be described as legal risk analysis.
Another parameter we apply focus on legal usability. The legal usability of a vocabulary is rated according to how well the structure within the vocabulary complies with conceptual structures of law in general. To clarify, is what is called a 'contract' a contract also in the legal sense of the word? Is the vocabulary usable for a lawyer in discussing legal issues or not? Sometimes concepts that have a distinct legal meaning are used in a completely different way in vocabulary projects, thus causing unnecessary confusion.
Legal coherence is defined as whether or not the different concepts and processes involved in a project are coherent from a legal point of view. This is to ensure that the project is not saying one thing and in practice performing other tasks.
In the review process, criteria of legal quality, legal usability, and legal coherence are analysed and estimated. The first step one must carry out, however, is to estimate whether a vocabulary is legally relevant (see Figure 2 below).
We have chosen to take one example from each of the categories available at the XML.org.[3] We examined the different entries under each heading and chose one of the vocabularies[4]-DTDs or Schemas-and evaluated them on the basis of what the relevance of legal analysis would be for these projects.
Our relevance rating was simple: we examined the standards to see if there were immediate legal issues obvious to a lawyer in the descriptions and structure of the vocabularies. If we found such issues, we noted them down, and then evaluated the number and importance of the issues discovered in this work.
Each vocabulary was then given a rating from low to high. We assume that all these projects could benefit from legal analysis, but it is sometimes clear that the utility is very limited.
Our ratings are these:
Low: The project would probably benefit from a few legal pointers, but it is a) too technical or b) should specialise in some other way to be really interesting.
Medium: There are legal issues, but they are not pressing.
High: The project is in need of legal analysis and should be subjected to at least a cursory analysis from legal professionals before they are used in any serious way.
Note that we do not say anything about whether or not these projects have actually been subjected to rigorous legal analysis or not. In some instances, it is reasonable to think that this has been the case. Our interest in principle is whether such a need exists.
The sample is not representative in any statistically significant way. However, it is representative enough to base a preliminary and exploratory analysis on. The fact that we have found some indications is in itself interesting enough to be a reason for further research.
The XML.org registry is one of the most well known registries in the XML-world, and as such it provides an excellent starting point for our research. It could be argued that there are other repositories, or that no repositories are advanced enough to form the basis of research such that we present here-but doing so would miss our point. We are not arguing that this is the only way to go about this form of research, but rather a way that deserves to be explored.[5]
The study encompassed all 43 categories in the XML.org registry, with a choice of one project from each category. These were then indexed and evaluated for legal relevancy, and the relevancy was then qualified into three different classes (low, medium, high).
The projects examined are listed in Appendix I of this paper. It includes descriptions, names and specifications of which legal issues we found to be relevant for each studied project. The issues we checked for were primarily these:
Transactional: Issues of contract and interpretation of contract.
Privacy: Issues of personal data protection.
Company secrets: Issues of information that a company might want to keep classified.
Liability: Issues pertaining to the liability of parties in the project, and in the field that the project describes.
Intellectual property: Copyright, patents and related issues.
Tax: Taxation issues
Financial law: Issues concerning behaviour in financial markets, et cetera.
Interestingly enough, the results were mixed. Not all projects were legally relevant, neither were they all legally irrelevant. The result of our simple investigation is that there are many cases where legal issues are relevant to the emerging new vocabularies. The results are displayed below.
47 percent of the projects were rated as "high" legal relevance. Another 23 percent, making a relevant total of 70 percent, were rated medium.
The network community for law and information standards is constantly growing. Legal XML is a US initiative[6] and LEXML[7]an European response to the need to actively acknowledge the implications of XML in the legal domain. At the XML European conference in Berlin '01, the establishment of LEXML was confirmed.[8]
Developments in the information market has shown a need to broaden the perspective by means of a supplementary arena for legal reviews and legal system design in which information standards in general are considered. Practically, this means that the evolving LISA will host the Swedish branch of LEXML (LEXML.se) as a special area of interest. LISA is thus an umbrella network engaged also in other methods than XML, such as within the area of information security.
LISA has its basis in the legal field that commonly is referred to as "law and informatics". Its focus may, generally speaking, be divided into two separate areas that interact closely with each other. On the one hand, there is the general need to work with substantive law issues related to the introduction of IT in society. Typically, IT-law concerns e-contracting, intellectual property rights to digital works, privacy protection in digital environments, freedom of information on the Internet, and so forth. On the other hand, law and informatics shows an interest in the development and management of legal information systems (in a broad sense). Here the emphasis is placed on opportunities and pitfalls associated with different types of IT applications that have legal implications. It may concernIT support directed towards the legal domain itself as well as design and management issues that have an impact on legal assessments in other ways.
In this context, it is important to be aware of the fact that the above-mentioned fields of interests are not to be conceived of as two separate ones, but instead they interact closely with each other. Integration is thus a keyword. For instance, an in-depth understanding of the rules and regulations governing the use of electronic signatures presupposes an understanding of the different security levels associated with a so-called advanced signature as opposed to a so-called qualified one. At the same time the design and development of IT-support for message authentication requires legal awareness of applicable law and predominating legal principles of evidence, etc.
| (a) Information standards need to be legally managed |
The target of information standards may range from the management of business data such as product data, to core legal information such as parliamentary documents and business contracts. Information standards applied give rise to questions of substantive IT-law as well as methodological issues associated with its design and implementation. LISA takes a responsibility for sharing information about the legal implications of information standards. |
| (b) The digital network society requires proactive law |
Conventionally, law functions as a reactive tool for conflict solving when things already have gone wrong. The introduction of information standards of different kinds calls for legal actions at a much earlier stage in order to avoid the establishment of legally non-valid technical solutions. Therefore, there is a growing need to support the kind of proactive legal assessments that have become an intrinsic feature of modern law. The network environment is a purposeful platform for the kind of instant reactions that are vital considering today’s rapid developments. LISA plays a new role in the shaping of law on the information market. Major means and methods for LISA are to produce legal reviews of information standards and to contribute to ongoing debates as well as to support legal system design activities. |
| (c) Trust enhancement is the goal |
Every organisation, be it a private enterprise or a public authority, needs to reflect upon the management of information governing internal as well as external actions. Generally speaking, it boils down to trust in global digital information and the need for legal information security in open as well as closed digital networks. LISA’s overall goal is to enhance legally founded trust in the use of information standards. |
LISA will be working in accordance with an open agenda, and it will be possible to take part of Lisa’s work without adopting common positions on specific issues. However, should the need or opportunity arise to speak in the name of LISA this could sometimes prove an advantage. For this reason we have established a number of working forms. These are described below.
LISA consists of members and observateurs. Members are those who have not expressed a wish to become observateurs. Membership is open and administered by joining or leaving the e-mailing list that is hosted by LISA.[9]
Members can always speak as "members of LISA". Should anyone choose to speak out on any issue that draws attention to the work that LISA is performing, it is perfectly all right to sign or act as "member of LISA". When something is written, said, or done in this capacity, the views expressed are those by that individual alone, and not the views of LISA as a whole. This will be clearly stated at LISA’s web site.
Collective positions are only adopted through a consensus building process described below:
Anyone member can issue a Request for Comment (RFC) on a position paper or any other such document or act.
Such an RFC must be issued to the mailing list. The standard time in which comments should be submitted is 30 days.
If any comments are made, they must be injected into the document and a new RFC made for the consensus building process to go on.
When the RFC period is concluded a member can issue a Request for Position (RFP). This will then become the position of LISA if any one member of the list does not reject it in the following 30 days.
It should be noted that the process is very cumbersome, and that usually it will suffice to speak as "members of LISA", and not to claim any consensus on the views one wishes to express. This is due to the network character of the work that LISA performs. We do feel that there should be a process for adopting common positions should the need arise.
Under certain circumstances, processes, methods, and review service might be developed under the umbrella of LISA. These methods need not be commonly adopted positions, but can instead be marketed as "methods developed in collaboration with the LISA-network." Neither members nor observateurs are responsible for these methods unless they have developed them and are using them. LISA accepts no liability whatsoever for such methods.
Our study shows that a considerable amount of the vocabulary entries in the XML.org registry have legal implications. If the legal aspects are disregarded it is likely to add costs to XML-related projects.
The major conclusion to be drawn is that the our suggested approch of legal review appears to be a fruitful direction towards trust enhancement and cost reduction in digital environments where information standards play an important role. Naturally, work remains concerning both means and methods but the need for proactive legal assessments have been established.
The LISA network will hopefully contribute in this work, but like every network it is depending on both community activity and acceptance. It remains to be seen how old LISA will grow, but there is every reason to take a bright view of the future.
| Name | Sector | Purpose | Legal issues | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Sector | Purpose | Legal issues | Examples |
| PapiNet | Accounting | papiNet covers transactions between parties within the Paper Supply Chain. papiNet is intended to provide value to all partners in the Paper Supply Chain. | Medium | Transactional (contract interpretation), Privacy - to the extent personal data is processed. |
| Flight Plan DTD v1.0 | Aerospace | DTD defined to specify the desired flight plan between airports, using vor, ndb, fixed points, and standard procedures like sids and stars. This DTD is used in the Flight Simulation environment and may not be used for real flight plans, but could serve as a base or reference for a more serious work. | Medium | Privacy Transactional |
| MusicXML | Arts & entertainment | MusicXML is designed to represent musical scores and sheet music, specifically common western musical notation from the 17th century onwards. It is designed as an interchange format for music notation, analysis, retrieval, and performance applications. | High | Intellectual property |
| Astronomical Instrument Markup Language | Astronomy | The Astronomical Instrument Markup Language (AIML) is a domain-specific implementation of the Instrument Markup Language (IML). NASA Goddard and AppNet Inc., are developing AIML to command and control astronomical instruments | Low | Liability |
| Credit Application Format | Automotive | Specification (PDF) and schema (XDR) for consumer credit application, for use in automotive finance. | High | Transactional Privacy |
| Open Financial Exchange | Banking | Open Financial Exchange DTD Specification | High | Transactional Liability Privacy |
| GAME Genome Annotation Markup Elements | Biology | Annotations are a summarization of all the collected features discerned and described on related sequences of genomic DNA, transcripts, mRNAs (and cDNAs which are treated as their logical equivalent), and proteins. Each of these molecules has regions along their linear length described by annotators as 'features' | High | Intellectual property Privacy? |
| XBRL (extensible Business Reporting Language) | Business reporting | eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) brings the publication, exchange, and analysis of the complex financial information in corporate business reports into the dynamic and interactive realm of the Internet. XBRL provides a common platform for critical business reporting processes and improves the reliability and ease of communicating financial data among users internal and external to the reporting enterprise. XBRL is an XML-based, royalty-free, and open standard being developed by XBRL International, a consortium of over 170 companies and agencies, delivering benefits to investors, accountants, regulators, executives, business and financial analysts, and information providers. | High | TaxTransactionalExchange rulesFinancial lawCompany secretsIntellectual PropertyPrivacy |
| CustomersSchema | Business Services | Schema to Validate Customers. | High | Privacy |
| UDDI schema | Catalogues | describes UDDI funtioning | High | Transactional Privacy Intellectual property |
| Vertical integration in process technology | Chemistry | This schema enables the communication between ERP-Systems an Production-Managanagemet-Systems in process technology (chemical-, food-, agriculture- industry). Recipes can be exchanged between both systems. Processorders can be generated and the recorded process-values can be exchanged. (e.g. amount of used raw material(lots), energy consumption, duration of the productionprocess...). The values wihch can be exctracted out of the XML-document can be used for the activation of transactions in softwaremodules like production-planning and material-management. | Medium | - |
| e.bip Tile Schemas | Construction | The purpose of this schema is to characterize a ceramic or natural stone tile. The schema has been developed in the European IST project e.bip (http://www.ebip.net) and is in use for data exchange with an electronic marketplace for tiles. | Low | - |
| Department of the Army Form 2410 transport schema | Customer relation | This is the transport format required by the US Army to deliver DA Form 2410 information using their interoperability architecture. The DA 2410 represents the lowest component tracking on parts that are critical or life limited. This architecture is currently in use only by the Army Aviation and Missile Command in their communication to internal depots and external contractors. | Medium | Transactional Classified information |
| Invoice.dtd | Databases | Invoice | High | Transactional Privacy Intellectual property |
| Trading Partner Agreement Markup Language | e-commerce | A TPA is an electronic contract that uses XML to stipulate the general contract terms and conditions, participant roles (such as buyers and sellers), communication and security protocols. | High | Transactional Liability Privacy Company secrets |
| EDI Implementation Guide Mark Up Language | EDI | XML mark-up to encapsulate all the information contained in an EDI guideline | Medium | Transactional Liability |
| APM2ERP request schemaSubmitter | - | The APM layer enables the automated performance measurement by requesting performance measurement data from XML connectors of enterprise resource planing systems (ERP). The APM layer uses XML over HTTP for this communication processes. The XML documents are required to handle the request for data by the APM connector and the response of the ERP connector to this request. | Low | - |
| TED | Education | TED (Training Exchange Definition) is an XML standard for the definition of training offers, especially for continuing training. It contains description of training courses ("simple" trainings) and training programmes (a set of individual courses, which are called units in this case). The training descriptions contain a title, a description, objectives, ..., but also organizational fields like the payment mode, the mode of organisation, contact persons, the teachers of the training, the locations of the training, sessions... Each training can also be classified in catalogues. Please contact us (toma@tudor.lu) if you need more information about TED. | High | Transactional Intellectual property Privacy |
| Business Associates (BAML) | Energy | This schema can be used to share information about companies or people. As a stand-alone schema, it is used to share company names, addresses, contact information, service lists and so on with stakeholders. Alternatively, it can be embedded in other schemas so that any XML document can choose to embed as much or as little detail about a company as is necessary. | High | PrivacyTransactional |
| Market Data Markup Language (MDML) Specification Version 0.12 | Financial service | This document describes an implementation of XML to be used for distributing financial information. | High | Transactional Liability |
| RecipeML | Food services | Recipe Markup Language -- The Format for Online Recipe Content.(Formerly known as DESSERT.) Currently at version 0.5; industry participation in completion of the spec is welcome. | Medium | Intellectual property |
| Geography Markup Language (GML) | Geography | OpenGIS® Implementation Specification, 20 February 2001 | Low | - |
| De-Identify Health Care Claim | Healthcare | XSL style sheet to de-identify an X12N 837 Institutional Health Care Claim in compliance with HIPAA Privacy Rule (45 C.F.R. Section 164.514(b)) - For sample HTML output, see http://www.complyx.com/lib/complyx/837institutional-DeID.xml. Use XSLT engine to create XML output and save as new file to maintain privacy of source information. | High | Privacy |
| HRXML | Human resources | Staffing Exchange Protocol Version 1.1 includes explicit support for procurement of temporary and contract staff. A wide variety of changes also have been made from the previous version to improve the flexibility and completeness of the SEP DTDs and to make the them easier to deploy globally. Version 1.1 is designed to be backwardly compatible. Version 1.0 documents are valid against Version 1.1 DTDs. Certain Version 1.0 features are now deprecated. Note that SEP's JobPositionPosting DTD has three options for structuring Resumes. | High | Privacy |
| Virtual Instruments Meta Language (VIML) | Industrial control | VIML (Virtual Instruments Markup Language) is DTD for describing location, protocol and device information for a network of virtual instrumentation devices and/or systems. | Low | - |
| LOGML - Log Markup Language | Internet/web | Log Markup Language (LOGML) is an XML 1.0 application designed to describe log reports of web servers. Web-data mining is one of the current hot topics in computer science. Mining data that has been collected from web server logfiles, is not only useful for studying customer choices, but also helps in organizing web pages. This is accomplished by knowing which web pages are most frequently accessed by the web surfers. The structure of a web site is represented as a web graph (XGMML). In mining the data from the log statistics, we use the web graph in annotating the log information. Further we give summary reports, comprising of information such as client sites, types of browsers and the usage time statistics. We also gather the client activity in a web site as a subgraph of the web site graph. This subgraph can be used to get better understanding of general user activity in the web site. In LOGML, we create a new XML vocabulary to structurally express the contents of the logfile information. | Medium | - |
| Welding Data | Manufacturing | A modest set of welding terms that describe processes and process variables. Some definitions come from AWS specifications. | Low | - |
| ODRL | Multimedia | The Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) provides the semantics for a Digital Rights Management expression language and data dictionary pertaining to all forms of digtial content. The ODRL is a vocabulary for the expression of terms and conditions over digital content including permissions, constraints, obligations, and agreements with rights holders. The ODRL is positioned to be extended by different industry sectors (eg ebooks, music, audio, software) and to be a core interoperability language. | High | Intellectual property |
| XMLNews | News | XMLNews-Meta defines a set of metadata information about news objects. You can use XMLNews-Meta to transmit metadata about any kind of news object, whether textual (such as an XMLNews-Story document) or non-textual (such as an image or audio clip) in the same, standard format. | High | Intellectual property rightsPrivacyFreedom of speech |
| CaveMap DTD | Other industry | DTD for the CaveScript CaveMap XML | Low | - |
| Virtual Hyperglossary (VHG) | Press/publishing | This folder describes the VHG DTD and associated information. Utlimately the primary description of a VHG will be an XML Schema, and we are working on creating one. [At present, 2000-06, the Schema spec is still in draft.] | High | - |
| Real Estate Property Markup Language | Real Estate | The REPML schema addresses the need for a concise, property-centric document model and information interchange framework for real estate properties and listings. REPML utilizes the DCN namespace, an accepted standard for Real Estate. | High | TransactionalLiabilityReal estate |
| CycML | AI/robotics | OpenCyc is the open source version of the Cyc(r) knowledge base (artificial intelligence). Developers can use CycML to exchange knowledge with one another, and CycML will also allow the KB contents to be imported and exported for archiving. | Low | - |
| EML | Science | Ecological Metadata Language (EML) is a metadata standard developed by the ecology discipline and for the ecology discipline. It is based on prior work done by the Ecological Society of America and associated efforts (Michener et al., 1997, Ecological Applications). EML is implemented as a series of XML document types that can by used in a modular and extensible manner to document ecological data. Each EML module is designed to describe one logical part of the total metadata that should be included with any ecological dataset. | Low | - |
| X.509_PMI_RB_policy | Security | Specification of a role based access control policy, for use by the PERMIS API, that uses X.509 attribute certificates to hold uses roles. | High | TransactionalPrivacySecurity/Crime |
| DDI CodeBook v1.2.2 | Social sciences | The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) is an effort to establish an international criterion and methodology for the content, presentation, transport, and preservation of "metadata" about datasets in the social and behavioral sciences. | Medium | - |
| GPSml | Software | A standard XML Schema for the encoding of location/position data typically generated by GPS (Global Position System) devices and applications. | Medium | PrivacyTelecommunications Law |
| Engineering Change Proposal (DD 1693) Short Form | Supply chain | This schema specifies an Engineering Change Proposal Data Interoperability Template for the JECMM project; it is a "short form" version of the complete ECP DD 1692 schema. The JECMM project is focused on making improvements in managing engineering changes over the life cycle of a deployed weapon system and its equipment. The content is based on a DoD form DD 1692. The ECP Data Interoperability Template is a PDML Application Transaction Set (ATS). | Low | - |
| WML | Telecommunications | WAP Forum Releases This page lists the latest WAP Forum conformance release, along with the specifications which are in an Approved state, but not yet included in a release. In addition, the page provides links to additional information on the specifications. The proposed and prototype specifications that were available here in the past have now been moved to a separate documents under review page. For more information about older releases, see below. Anyone can submit comments on WAP Forum specifications, see below for more information. | Low | - |
| Marine Trading Markup Language | Transport | The Marine Trading Markup Language (MTML) is a standard to help a broad base of small, medium and large buyers and suppliers in the marine trading industry conduct their fundamental trading transactions electronically via the Internet | Low | - |
| Travel Booking Engine | Travel | These schemas allow any travel web site or travel application to get an XML interface to the major GDS. They allow to search for fares, availabilities of air, car and hotel, get seat map, flight info and finally book PNRs. | Medium | - |
| WOMF | Weather | Weather Observation Markup Format is an application of XML to describe a particular kind of documents: weather observation reports. | Low | - |
| CPExhange | XML | This document presents the Customer Profile Exchange (CPExchange) Specification for the privacy-enabled global exchange of customer profile information. | High | Privacy |
Table 1.
Transactional=contract law, liability and other related issues
[AN 1997] Andersson, U. " Workshop on Electronic Archiving: An evaluation of the Sesam report" Skrifter utgivna av Svenska Riksarkivet 215. Stockholm: Swedish National Arhcives and ASTRA, 1997.
[BE 2000] Bertino, E., and Ferrari, E. "Secure and Selective Dissemination of XML Documents" Technical Report, Department of Computer Science, University of Milano, 2000
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[1] XML-based vocabularies have also been suggested to deal with privacy issues. See for example Hochheiser, Harry "The Platform for Privacy Preferences as a Social Protocol: An Examination within the U.S. Policy Context" ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Vol 2 Issue 4 Nov 2002, pp 276-306 for an evaluation of the P3P-standard.
[2] Lists of different projects are available at, for example http://www.xml.org and http://www.oasis-open.org [2003-01-22]
[3] This research was performed in january 2003, and the numbers may have changed since.
[4] This term is meant to include both DTDs and schemas.
[5] An alternative would be to classify and examine different vocabularies and emerging standards on the basis of installed base and deployment. We are currently looking into this approach.
[6] See http://www.legalxml.org
[7] See http://www.lexml.de
[8] The following mission statement: was decided on:
LEXML has been established to serve the growing interest in automated exchange of legal data. It serves as an open forum for the legal domain to exchange ideas and experiences associated with XML and related core standards.
LEXML is a point of co-ordination and a workforce for the development of standardised structures, vocabularies and data exchange tools. LEXML pursues its goals in particular through the development of an open source legal office programme, which speaks and understands XML.
LEXML is a network of independently organised communities, which may be jurisdiction oriented (like Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden) or subject matteroriented. It is decentralised, with a peer-to-peer approach. Anyone can start a LEXML community.
LEXML may also be described as a network of websites linked together so as to compose a true information resource within the European legal domain. The communities stay in contact through mailing lists, meeting and by jointly working on cross-jurisdictional projects.
[9] See http://www.skriver.nu/lexml
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