[cc-community] CC-BY content usable under GFDL

Matthew J. Agnello matt.agnello at gmail.com
Mon May 5 21:18:47 EDT 2008


> It seems to me that the only way that "dealing with the copyrhight
> holder"  is not part of the equation is if its realesed completely to
> the public domain.

It's true that with PD work the copyright holder is truly removed from  
the equation. However, for practical purposes, I use CC content every  
day in videos where I never contact the copyright holder. PD allows me  
to do this, but it does not protect downstream users -- of which I am  
one -- of continued cultural access to a piece of work. I originally  
chose CC BY-SA for my work because it allowed me to use my work to add  
to the pool of freely available works. However, I'm also inadvertently  
locking up my content and all derivatives from being used with other  
licenses.

Consider the problem of icons. Artists create icons, and they may  
license an icon using a copyleft license. Because icons are  
traditionally used in applications, they might choose the GPL so the  
applications that use these icons must also be GPL licensed and  
therefore free. However, some artists license their icons under CC BY- 
SA, because icons are art and while most software will use the GPL,  
artists tend to use CC. I ran into this problem when I went looking  
for some icons for my website, which is licensed under BY-SA (source +  
text). I had to re-license the source under the GPL to use the icons I  
wanted to use. Probably a good move, but it made the legal situation a  
bit muddy. Since the CC license is non-revokable, my source carries  
both licenses, my copy carries another license (BY-SA only), and I'm  
really just banking on not getting sued, because I can hardly  
understand the legal wranglings myself let alone explain it to a  
judge. (The legality of such a move is beyond this thread, so if you  
want to talk about that specifically, go ahead make a new one.)

If the two worlds were completely separate, one copyleft license for  
each would be fine, but they aren't separate, and we need license  
mobility to ensure people inadvertently aren't locked out of content.  
However, that license mobility has to respect the differences in those  
licenses, so abuse does happen where, as Greg suggested, people just  
migrate the content to the weakest license.

Best,
// Matt

--
Matthew J. Agnello
http://hungryfilmmaker.com/
< matt.agnello at gmail.com >

On May 5, 2008, at 5:28 PM, Robert Atwood (lists) wrote:

> Matthew J. Agnello wrote:
>
>> ... without that mobility, it also means that a work
>> becomes "proprietary" to a particular license -- that is, you're once
>> again forced to broker a deal with the copyright holder to gain  
>> access
>> to the work ...
>
> It seems to me that the only way that "dealing with the copyrhight
> holder"  is not part of the equation is if its realesed completely to
> the public domain.
> _______________________________________________
> cc-community mailing list
> cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community

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