[cc-licenses] If a middleman gives or sells a "by" licensed image...
Jessica Coates
j2.coates at qut.edu.au
Mon Sep 17 21:34:40 EDT 2007
Hi all
We had a long discussion with Mia last year about the licensing of
derivative works, and the conclusion that we came to is that derivative
works can be licensed under any licence that is more restrictive than the
original work, but not under more permissive licences.
So where the original material is under a BY licence, the derivative work
can be licensed under a BY-NC or BY-SA licence, or under a non-CC licence
that includes the attribution requirement (and the other BY restrictions) -
but not under a licence that doesn't require attribution (eg the CC Public
Domain).
The logic for this is that a derivative work must incorporate recognisable
elements of the original work (otherwise it isn't a derivative work - it's
an original work in its own right). The person creating the derivative work
cannot pass on those recognisable elements under a more permissive licence
than he himself received them under, because he can't grant rights he
doesn't have.
A person would only be able to licence a derivative work under a more
permissive licence if the CC licence explicitly said they could (eg 'You can
licence derivative works under any licence you want) - which they don't.
This accords with the table on the CC FAQ wiki -
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ - which is a fairly good place to check
whether your re-licensing of a CC work is ok. The only problem with the
table is that it's got an error in the BY-ND row - you can't pass on BY-ND
under BY-NC-ND.
Jessica
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