[cc-community] What exactly does 'SA' mean?

Lloyd cc at phizz.demon.co.uk
Tue Sep 28 14:17:53 EDT 2010


On 28/09/2010 16:51, Andrew Rens wrote:
>
>
> On 28 September 2010 10:43, Gautam John <gautam at prathambooks.org
> <mailto:gautam at prathambooks.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Andrew:
>
>
> Hi Gautam
>
>
>      > What do you mean by the resulting work? It sounds as if you mean
>     several
>      > works, e.g. a news story accompanied by an image. The text of the
>     story does
>      > not need to be CC By SA, but the image sourced from elsewhere
>     that is used
>      > under CC By SA remains under CC By SA...and must be marked as such.
>
>     I had always believed that the entire resultant work needs to be
>     CC-BY-SA licensed and not just the original CC-BY-SA piece of
>     content used because it was a viral license that attached to all
>     derivative works.
>
>
> The question is whether what is produced is a new work or a bunch of
> works used together.
>
> If its a new work it must be CC By SA as you've already said.
> If its a collection of works then no.
>
> For example a book of short stories could have some works under ARR and
> some under CC By SA and some under CC By
> and the result is that each must have its own license.
> Interestingly some publishers I've spoken too have decided not to this
> because they are afraid that someone will get confused and copy the ARR
> work.
>
> Similarly Flicker can host photos under ARR, CC By etc.
>
> The question at what point does something become a derivative work?
> If you change it.
> Can mere incorporation into another work change the nature of a work?
> Lawyers answer: it depends. So including a still image in a film does
> change the work, so that would be a derivative work.
> But does displaying an image on a webpage next to some text change the
> nature of the image?
> I don't believe that it does. So I can have ARR text alongside a clearly
> marked CC By SA image on a website.


I don't believe that it does either. If you modify the image ie use it 
in a collage or alter it significantly, then you have a derivative. IOW 
if you have to have added significant elements to the image which gives 
you an additional copyright in the altered image then the work must be 
SA. If you have simply cropped the image, added a border or frame, or 
slapped some text by the side of it then in 99.9% of cases the SA 
element does not apply.




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