XHTML documents with inline, policy-aware provenance

Abstract

Constructing code that aids users in making information policy decisions in a decentralized Web-based environment will require seamless integration between document content and metadata. A system of embedding and reasoning over relevant policy information will be an important step towards this integration. In this thesis I present a method for annotating XHTML documents with provenance metadata using RDFa. I present a method of performing copy and paste operations on XHTML documents that preserves this metadata. Finally, I apply these tools to the practical use case of an end user composing documents from multiple sources with Creative Commons licenses. By using provenance metadata, the user is able to combine arbitrary Creative Commons works and use automated tools to calculate the applicable license of the composite work.