Creative Commons

founded on the notion that some people may not want to exercise all of the intellectual property rights the law affords them (works are automatically copyrighted)

define a set of (machine and human readable) public licenses (RDF/XML).

Attribution. Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial. Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.

No Derivative Works. Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.

Copyleft. Permit others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

a means for describing works (Dublin Core and CC) in RDF/XML and associating license with these works

Current Metadata Specification is under discussion (comments welcome)