User Generated Content needs terms framework and rights icons

Khris Loux did a brilliant, interactive, presentation at Widgety Goodness today based on this js-kit mini-site. js-kit provide widget-like tools for adding features to existing websites.

We debated a number of topics, including Content Ownership. The issue is something like this: you embed a js-kit comment widget on your existing website, and users leave comments there. The question of who owns the content is a real interesting one.

Is it owned by js-kit, who own the widget and persist the comment, or is it owned by the embedding publisher, or the user, or some weird combination of all of the above?

Here’s my answer: It is pretty much all of the above. What we need is something like what creative commons did for adding clarity and simplicity into copyright by developing a set of generic licenses. What I’m talking about is a terms framework that is made clear and simple (via several options). It has to be clear and simple enough to allow the terms, conditions and ownership to be expressed next to a comment box so that it is clear who has which rights, and clear to the content creator just what is going on. Seriously, these rights icons could go all over the place. Every blog comment post. Every forum post. Every review field. Anywhere user-contributed content is being created.

And apart from the icons, this ought to be ripe for some microformat development too, to perhaps allow browsers to help with presenting the terms information.

A nice big non-trivial project. Who wants to take this one on.

Also, if we simplify this down, it ought to be a lot easier to mashup the rights of a widget provider and a publishing/embedding website and end up with rights that actually work and can be explained in a few icons.