[cc-community] Are CC and CC share alike compatibles?
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Tue Apr 1 17:21:54 EDT 2008
dooteo wrote:
> But yesterday, I asked about if is possible to use CC license and Art
> Libre songs in a video, and the answers was _no_.
The answer to "Can I use "By-SA" and "LAL" songs in a video?" is "No."
You can certainly use "By" and "LAL" or "By" and "By-SA" in it (causing
you to need to release under "LAL" or "By-SA" respectively). It's only
when you try to use two different copyleft licenses together that things
get sticky.
The ShareAlike (or Copyleft) puts requirements on what license you must
release under.
If you use source materials with conflicting copyleft requirements, then
there is a conflict: you can't release "By-SA" sources under "LAL"
because that violates "By-SA"; you can't release "LAL" sources under
"By-SA" because that violates the copyleft in "LAL" (I think... I
actually am not very familiar with the details of LAL).
HOWEVER. You should realize that this is generally an unintended
consequence. It is very likely that if you can simply ask the authors of
(say) the LAL material and request a "By-SA" license so you can use it
with "By-SA" material in a "By-SA" movie, that they would say "yes".
Because although the legal nature of copyleft is that it must be
released under the *same* license, the real intent of most licensors is
that it must be released under a *free* license.
This is a serious flaw of free/copyleft licensing regimes, and some of
the organizations involved are taking steps at making the licenses
compatible. For example, the new By-SA 3.0 already has language that can
be used to make it retro-actively compatible with "LAL" -- provided that
the people behind "LAL" reciprocate and allow "LAL" works to be
relicensed under By-SA 3.0.
OTOH, there is a very real fear of copyleft dilution that this creates.
After all, the licenses do have substantive differences, which
cross-licensing washes over.
> I want to use CC Attribution, CC by Share Alike and Art Libre licensed
> songs in my videos. So at the end of those videos will appear songs
> attribution (and licenses which they have), and release those videos
> with a free license (i.e. CC by Share Alike or Art license).
To summarize:
(BY) + (BY-SA) + (LAL) --> NO
(BY) + (BY-SA) --> YES
(BY) + (LAL) --> YES
(BY-SA) + (LAL) --> NO
If you really want to use the material, there are two possibilities:
1) Ask for additional licenses from the authors. Odds are pretty good
that you'll be allowed to use LAL material under By-SA or vice versa.
(This is what I'd do). Note that, strictly speaking, they don't have to
release the song itself under By-SA, they just have to give you
permission to relicense derivatives under By-SA.
2) Wait for the two organizations to work out whatever cross-over scheme
they had in mind (this looked like it was really going to happen a few
months ago, but not much seems to have happened since).
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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