[cc-community] Use cases for cc by-sa compatibility with GPL
drew Roberts
zotz at 100jamz.com
Fri Jan 6 14:07:43 EST 2012
On Friday 06 January 2012 12:15:19 Christopher Allan Webber wrote:
> drew Roberts <zotz at 100jamz.com> writes:
> > On Thursday 05 January 2012 15:57:28 Alan Cox wrote:
> >> On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 15:11:26 -0500
> >>
> >> drew Roberts <zotz at 100jamz.com> wrote:
> >> > On Thursday 05 January 2012 14:09:27 Alan Cox wrote:
> >> > > CC doesn't deal with physical objects however and isn't intended to.
> >> >
> >> > I would think that cc deals with anything that the law gives a
> >> > copyright to. Doesn't a sculpture get a copyright.
> >>
> >> I am quoting what I have been told several times when I have contacted
> >> creative commons about problems in this area. So unless official policy
> >> has changed my understanding is that this is correct.
> >
> > So, could someone from CC please clear this up? Am I really forbidden
> > from painting a mural on a wall and putting a BY-SA license on it?
> >
> > Or are you talking physical objects as in a chair or a table or something
> > like that? (And to the CC person who answers the above, how is this
> > supposed to work in general?)
> >
> > all the best,
> >
> > drew
>
> Standard disclaimers about I Am Not a Lawyer, This Is Not Legal Advice,
> etc, but my understading is that a mural on a wall, as a piece of art,
> is subject to copyright. That creative work, being copyrightable,
> should also be CC license'able. Copyright automatically affixes itself
> to any original work of authorship that becomes fixed in any tangible
> medium of expression. The tangible medium could be a wall, a cocktail
> napkin, or some file when you hit save on your computer.
>
> It's not that non-digital things can't be copyrighted. It's just that
> you aren't actually copyrighting the "physical space" itself as I
> understand it, but the actual work underlying it. So yes, if someone
> takes a photo of your CC licensed wall, that could be subject to CC
> licensing. (Obviously you couldn't copy and paste HTML from our license
> chooser to mark it up, in this case, as I understand ;)) And it's also
> worth noting that if someone takes a picture of the mural of the wall,
> the photographer gets a copyright in the photo that's separate from the
> copyright in the mural in the wall.
>
> The point is that it's not the *wall* that's being copyrighted, it's the
> *creative work*. And yes, creative works can be immersed in physical
> space (and obviously traditionally often have been, since copyright has
> existed well before digitization of works).
>
> My understanding is that yes, you can use Creative Commons to copyright
> copyrightable works that are immersed in physical space. But it's not
> the actual physical object you're copyrighting, it's the creative work.
> That's not a Creative Commons restriction, that's a copyright one.
Fine. Though in the case of a sculpture, there is no wall. ~;-) Still I do get
that it is not the stone or wood that is copyrighted...
The question was though: What is the source that would need to be distributed
in the case of a source requiring copyleft license when the license was
applied to the sculpture or the mural on the wall?
>
> - Chris
all the best,
drew
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