Is it time for a moratorium on metadata?

The past ten years saw the introduction of three major metadata specifications. These are the heavily test biased Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DMCI), MPEG-7 which expanded the scope of describing a single audiovisual object, and the Semantic Web that characterizes all information, regardless of location or encoding. Now a decade later, it is evident that not much new has been learned about using any of these specifications to locate generalized new media. Against this background, a five-point plan for a moratorium on metadata is introduced: proclaiming the three major metadata specifications as Official Successes and are Ready for Business; issuance of a second proclamation calling for a general moratorium on metadata; during the moratorium period, it is critical to concentrate on locating objects within a range of mixed-media assets based on context-sensitive queries; a culturally diverse corpus of 1 million nontext media assets should be created; and consideration of a multimedia content differentiation.