[cc-community] Freely licensed content question(s)

Tim Cowlishaw tim at timcowlishaw.co.uk
Wed Oct 24 07:32:33 EDT 2007


IANAL, and may be wrong, but I was under the impression that the first
scenario is allowed as the Sharealike / copyleft clause of the CC SA
and GFDL licences applies to derivative works, and the inclusion of a
photo in a magazine such as 'people' is not considered a derivative,
therefore the sharealike clause is not triggered, and the magazine can
keep their ARR copyright.

However, in the second scenario, i'm guessing that incorporating text,
images and music into a video *is* creating a derivative, so you would
be compelled to licence the resulting work in a way that satisfies the
sharealike clause of both the GFDL and  CC-SA, meaning CC-NC-ND would
be out of the question, unless you were to negotiate a seperate
licence with the originators of the works you are incorporating into
your video (good luck with that...).

This may be entirely wrong of course, but this is my understanding of
the situation. I'm sure someone else on-list should be able to shed
some light on this..

Cheers!


Tim



On 10/24/07, sigmaman <sigmaman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let me be a little more specific, or perhaps clarify my situation. I
> am fairly familiar with the use terms of the various free licenses,
> but this scenario keeps popping up for me, and I believe CC, as an
> organization, could do a better job in explaining how to handle these
> kinds of things.
>
> Here are two scenarios that both involve using CC SA and GFDL
> material. In both cases, original content is being mixed with CC SA
> and GFDL material.
>
> Scenario 1) People Magazine wants to use 25 CC SA photos that they
> found on Flickr (and they provide attribution for each image). They
> also have found 5 GFDL articles from Wikipedia (and they provide all
> the necessary text to satisfy the GFDL) they'd like to include in the
> same issue. People Magazine also includes an enormous amount of
> original, copyrighted material (all rights reserved) in the same
> issue. Obviously, People Magazine is NOT going to license the ENTIRE
> magazine under a combo CC SA and GFDL. They, I think, would assume
> that they own all the rights to the content, cover to cover, except
> for the CC SA photos and the GFDL articles that they clearly, legally
> pointed out thus telling the reader that those elements are free. In
> essence, this issue of People would be treated commercially like any
> other issue of People.
>
> Scenario 2) I am building a video that deals with ancient history. I
> am going to use original material I created such as artwork, text and
> voice overs. Along with my material, I would like to incorporate
> several CC SA photos from Flickr, some Opsound music (CC SA) and
> numerous Wikipedia articles (GFDL) that deal with my subject matter. I
> will include all the necessary attribution text and information for
> both the CC license(s) and the GFDL. However the resulting video will
> be uploaded to Revver which enforces a CC NC ND license.
>
> So, I hope you see my quandary. Can both these scenarios work? I must
> admit I am more familiar with the CC licenses than I am the GFDL. It
> seems to me, and I am not an expert, but the CC license allows you to
> "perform the work" thus allowing its inclusion in such a video.
>
> Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated!
>
> Sig
>
> On 10/24/07, Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> > sigmaman wrote:
> > > Just curious about a couple of things dealing with freely licensed
> > > material and Revver. I'd like to incorporate some images that are CC
> > > Attribution, CC Sharealike and GFDL into a video that I would post
> > > using Revver. Does the fact that the resulting video license is a CC
> > > NC ND license prevent me from using the images that are licensed that
> > > way?
> >
> > For CC-By, there is no problem -- it makes no copyleft requirement. You
> > will of course have to attribute the work in the titles to your video
> > (unless your use is "fair use").
> >
> > For the others, this is a question of "fair use". If your work can
> > reasonably be called a "derivative" of these images, then your video
> > will need to follow copyleft.
> >
> > OTOH, if this rule were applied everytime a copyrighted image appeared
> > somewhere in a film, there would not be many films made! So many ways of
> > using an image in a video would fall under "fair use" (possibly called
> > "fair dealing" depending on your jurisdiction).
> >
> > For example, if you are taking video of a scene and there are
> > copyrighted fliers on a wall, or copyrighted book covers in a scene, or
> > trademarked goods (of course), then these are probably NOT affected by
> > copyright terms.
> >
> > OTOH, if you are actually creating an animation using the images as
> > backgrounds, or perhaps doing a documentary-style zoom/pan treatment of
> > the images, then it's quite probable that copyright would affect you --
> > and in that case, so does copyleft.
> >
> > Anything in between probably requires a lawyer.
> >
> > You could, of course, request permission from the author, either for
> > free or for pay, to include their work in your video, just as you can
> > for any other copyrighted work. Your chances are probably a bit better
> > with people who were willing to license their works freely -- but OTOH,
> > they may not like your new licensing terms, and it may be you have to
> > change them (or not use the work).
> >
> > I'd worry less about cross-licensing GFDL to CC-By-SA or vice-versa,
> > because in those cases, most authors will probably grant you the
> > alternate license (not all, but most people view them as roughly
> > equivalent in effect).
> >
> > Of course, IANAL, TINLA.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Terry
> >
> > --
> > Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
> > Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > cc-community mailing list
> > cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
> >
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