[cc-community] Documents containing quotes under different licenses.

Daniel Carrera dcarrera at math.umd.edu
Tue Apr 12 20:55:38 EDT 2005


João Pinheiro wrote:
> I have recently found myself with a question regarding the workings of 
> copyright law when dealing with quoted material.
> Imagine a case where someone is working on a document to be released 
> under a share-alike license and he wants to quote something from another 
> document licensed under a traditional copyright law (all rights 
> reserved), which wouldn't allow distribution or derivative works.
> Would it be possible to do this? Also, would quoting something from a 
> document be considered a derivative or is the quote found under a 
> different copyright law from the rest of the document?

This is the same as with any other copyright license. It is not unique to 
ShareAlike:

 * If the quote is short enough to fall under fair use, you're fine.
 * If it's not, you need permission.


> A corollary of this would be: if someone wants to quote something from a 
> document under a CC license with the No Derivative Works option. Could 
> he do that?

Only if it's small enough to fall under fair use.

> Or could he release a commercial document containing quotes 
> from a CC license with the Non-commercial option?**

Fair use.

Cheers,
-- 
Daniel Carrera          | I don't want it perfect,
Join OOoAuthors today!  | I want it Tuesday.
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