[cc-licenses] Clarification needed - Copyleft AND Share-Alike with Images

James Grimmelmann james at grimmelmann.net
Sun Feb 25 22:23:27 EST 2007


Dana Powers wrote:
> <snip/>
>> You don't ordinarily have the right to distribute my work. It's the
>> license which gives you the right to do so. The stipulation that the
>> result of combining my work with another work may only be distributed
>> if distributed under an equally free license no more creates a
>> covenant to limit the licensee's natural rights than the stipulation
>> that attribution must be provided, the technological measures can't be
>> used, that the license must be identified, etc.
> Yes, CC Licenses are basically contracts used to exchange certain
> copyright entitlements for various promises to attribute, notify, use
> and/or re-license in particular ways.
> 
> I am very skeptical, however, that tests like "distributed with" or
> "semantically related" are legally feasible.  Movie soundtracks are a
> bit easier because (among other things) the law already understands
> what the movie industry calls "sync rights," and they are pretty easy
> to define narrowly.  But is there an equivalent narrow legal right for
> photos used in print?
> 
>> Nor is this behavior especially novel, the FSF has decades of
>> experience getting compliance with the same behavioral aspects of the
>> GPL.
> Although the GPL still allows you to distribute on the same CD with
> non-GPL code.  How would you distinguish the two?  If you say
> "semantically related" I'll respectfully ask you to please define it
> in a way that would be useful to a lawyer or judge.

Moreover, "semantically related" is likewise probably significantly 
broader than the GPL's test for "modified work."  I can imagine two 
programs that are "semantically related" even though they are 
"independent and separate works."  Perhaps this is not quite what fans 
of "semantically related" mean by the term, but that just brings us back 
to Dana's point: that the term is unclear.

James



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