[whatwg] Helping people seaching for content filtered by license

[Jeff Walden]

On 8.6.09 17:33, Ian Hickson wrote:
>> - Search engines shouldn't be the gatekeeper when it comes to "valid"
>>    and "invalid" licenses. New licenses shouldn't be discouraged as
>>    they're vital to keep up with ever changing laws around the world. I
>>    don't want to wait around for search engines to decide that supporting
>>    a particular license is in their best interest.
>
> New licenses absolutely need to be discouraged. License proliferation is a
> huge problem. Any solution we come up with here must absolutely be
> designed in such a way as to make introducing a new license have a high
> cost, because each new license causes further fragmentation of the
> creative world.

Notwithstanding that I agree that the world has a surfeit of licenses and generally gains little from new ones:

What core principles for the technical design of HTML and the web dictate that license proliferation is a problem?

What design principles imply that it is the job of HTML5 to discourage the creation of new licenses?

Are there reasons to think that HTML5's implicit encouragement or discouragement of recognizing (or having the capability to recognize) many licenses would be effective at discouraging license creation, or more effective than more targeted actions in a separate venue to combat creation of new licenses?

Maybe I'm the only person who thinks it (I'd like to hope I'm merely the only person to say it, unless I've missed its mention in the past), but this feels like mission creep to me.

Jeff