[cc-community] A Silly Question
Mr. Puneet Kishor
punkish at eidesis.org
Fri Sep 30 09:10:27 EDT 2011
On Sep 30, 2011, at 7:28 AM, yarrel at gmail.com wrote:
> BY-SA 3.0 Unported gives me the right to create Adaptations and to incorporate the Work into Collections.
>
> Why can I not walk into a gallery of BY-SA work and adapt the work with a spraycan? Or incorporate the work into a collection in my swag bag?
>
> I assume this is because the works on the wall are other people's physical property and that the BY-SA grant of a copyright license doesn't affect this, even where granting me the right to make technical modifications in order to exercise my other rights. And that the "Work" is the copyright rather than the physical object. And that this is so obviously and universally true that there is no need for any further discussion of the distinction in the license text.
>
> Is that right?
>
Besides the fact that you might be violating implicit contractual obligations that you agreed to by entering the gallery (the "don't piss on my carpet" law), and you would be harming someone else's personal property, another rationale would be -- the work is copyrighted, but the idea of the work is not. The law gives you permission to incorporate the idea of the work in your work, but not the physical object owned by someone else. Alternatively, you could use a legitimately obtained copy of the work and spray paint it to your heart's content.
In any case, the particular instantiation of the idea hanging in the gallery is someone else's physical property, and no amount of pleading "free and open" is going to absolve you of your duty to behave per the norms of the civic society to which you subscribe.
--
Puneet Kishor
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