References

This issue has been reported by Antoine Isaac.

http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/mailman/archives/dcat_application_profile-geo/2015-August/000191.html

Explanation

Draft 6 of the GeoDCAT-AP specification uses dct:license and dct:accessRights instead of dct:rights. But the example that is in the annex II.15, is closer to the GNU example in that is in the DC guide.

[

[] dcat:distribution [ a dcat:Distribution ;

        dct:license [ a dct:LicenseDocument ;

            rdfs:label "Reuse is authorised according to the European Commission legal notice at http://ec.europa.eu/geninfo/legal_notices_en.htm"@en ] ;

        dct:accessRights [ a dct:RightsStatement ;

            rdfs:label "no limitation"@en ] ] .

]

Antoine points out that the object of dct:license in the example could rather be the object of a (more general) dct:rights statement. In case of using dct:license with an instance of dct:LicenseDocument, it could have been written:

[

[] dcat:distribution [ a dcat:Distribution ;

dct:license <http://ec.europa.eu/geninfo/legal_notices_en.htm> ;

          ]

]

The GeoDCAT-AP proposal is related to the reference standard. ISO defines different types of constraints, distinguishing between access and use. Dublin Core does something similar with dct:license and dct:accessRights, whereas dct:rights (super-property of both) covers both access and use.

It is going to be discussed how to proceed with the example provided in the GeoDCAT-AP specifications, as it could be unclear. However, the corresponding "element" in ISO uses free text. Therefore, the example reflects what it could be obtained when transforming an ISO record into a (Geo)DCAT-AP one.

In addition, the ISO schema allows URLs, and some data providers are currently using this feature to provide the link to the licence document. Thus, the GeoDCAT-AP WG considered this option in the GeoDCAT-AP XSLT, i.e. when a licence URL is specified, this is used as the URI of the licence document.

The XSLT documentation has a specific section on this ("Use conditions / licence URI"). It is also meant to collect and elaborate common / best practices for the use of HTTP URIs in geospatial metadata, not limited to licences, which might be addressed also by the SDW WG.

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