adding support for user authentication within Mapserver for GetCapablities and GetMap

[Gerry Creager]

Gregor Mosheh wrote:
> Sean Gillies wrote:
>>> Gerry Creager wrote:
>>>> Rights management is now well into the investigatory and 
>>>> specification stages in OGC.
> 
>>> He, that's excellent to hear. Thanks for the tip.
> 
>> No, it's not excellent. DRM is defective by design.
> 
> Hrm, perhaps I misunderstood. I read "access control" as in password 
> protection to get into my WMS/WFS server.
> 
> Gerry, did you mean access control at the application layer, so I can 
> have Mapserver manage user accounts and access to my WMS layers, or 
> something deeper such as DRM on the imagery, copy-protection on 
> GeoTIFFs, and the like?
> 
> (yeah, it's off the topic of Mapserver; so's a lot of educational and 
> interesting stuff we talk about :)

The working group title is GeoDRM.  I am not real happy with that but 
the bigger organizations are thinking of the resources they've put into 
their datasets and/or products. Some governments fail to see the 
benefits to their citizens of making geospatial data widely available, 
and thus are supporting this sort of thing.  It's gonna be an 
interesting period, but I'm trying to get them to see the benefits of 
authentication/authorization/capabilities control.  They keep thinking 
the RIAA/MPAA model is good and working.  We have interesting debates. 
I can't tell if I'm making headway or not.

The National Middelware Initiative (NSF funded, Internet2/SURA 
implemented) covers a lot of this via federation and credential exchange 
in their Shibboleth software initiative.

gerry
-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
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