[cc-community] Does BY-SA extend to a newspaper?

rob at robmyers.org rob at robmyers.org
Mon Apr 23 09:23:32 EDT 2007


Quoting drew Roberts <zotz at 100jamz.com>:

> For all of this contains, mere aggregation, use and the like, what is wrong
> with the concept I put forth which is "if a copyright arises" - that is,
> copyright law may already have the answer. If the work under the CC SA
> license is used in a work where a new copyright comes into being, that is
> what we should concern ourselves with. If no new copyright comes into
> existence, it is not a problem.
>
> Is this not a reasonable way to look at it? Strenghts? Weaknesses?

I think that is how it currently works. A derivative work is a work  
that would attract its own copyright. So having derivation as the  
copyleft trigger fits copyright law perfectly.

There seem to be two major cases where this does not fit people's  
expectations: the use of a piece of music in a film soundtrack and the  
use of a photograph as a magazine illustration. The former has been  
worked into the CC licenses as a special case where copyleft is  
triggered by something other than derivation, the latter has not.

So I don't think that we can say that the licenses should only concern  
themselves with how copyright law works; there are already examples of  
where they do not do this (NC is another).

- Rob.



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