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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Tomoaki Watanabe" <tomoaki_watanabe_cc AT hotmail.com>
  • To: cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: how to use By licensed materials (long)
  • Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 20:46:46 +0000

Hello. I'm working on a collaborative project to publish a booklet (illustrated guide for beginners) on CC, using readily available (CC-licensed) materials. And of course, we would like to license the booklet under a CC license (by or by-sa, most probably). I and some others have some questions regarding license terms, etc. and would like to get someone's help on how to use CCPL'd works.

(The publication will be in Japanese, by the way, and will be published in Japan.)

(1) How to give "Attribution"

If we (the booklet team) were to use multiple by-licensed works (each from separate author), and make modifications (layout, font, add drawings), etc, as opposed to simply compiling verbatim copy of each licensed work, how should we give credits to the original authors of the materials? Three different ideas came up to my mind:

(a) We can just list all the authors at the end of the booklet along with our names. This way, the readers of the booklet cannot distinguish which ones are the booklet authors, which ones are the authors of the materials used for the booklets.

(b) We should make a list in (year, author) format, just like some typical CD does, to indicate different copyright holders at different stages of production. But we do not have to explain anything further than that. Readers of the booklet can "guess," or do some research to find out whose contributions are what.

(c) We should specify which section of the booklet used which work, with copyright holder of the work, title of the work, & year.


The license text of 4-b seems to indicate that: (b) is the standard, but (a) is okay if there is no reasonable possibility to do anything beyond that (like in case of a CD), and maybe styles like (c) should be used if reasonably possible.

(2) When others use the booklet, how should they make attribution?

Now suppose the project goes well and the booklet sells quite a bit. And to our pleasure, some people think they want to produce an "alternative version" of the
booklet - changing layouts and drawings to their taste, replacing texts with more relevant stuff, etc.

The first-generation booklet is licensed CC-by, so the authors of the alternative version can make modifications freely as they see fit.

But what if they have decided to take just 2 chapters (out of 5) from the booklet, and expand on them? And say, among the list of 10 authors listed at the end of the booklet, only 2 people are relevant.

For example, suppose that the first-generaion booklet contained a piece about how CC license have been used by different artists and creators. The text was a derivative work of another person's piece (CC-by'ed), and that author is not part of the booklet project. Now his piece is completely dropped from the "alternative version," but the attribution would still remain because the authors of the alternative version do not know the details of whose works were in which chapters.

Or, by any chance, the copyright information of the booklet team and that of the source materials are treated differently?

In other words, "Original Author" in the license of the booklet mean the booklet team? or it includes all authors of the source materials (they are all CC-By) that the booklet have used, and the booklet team?


(3) Can materials under By & By-sa integrated and licensed under By-sa?

Now this is a different question. Can we take a material under By, modify, and
release the modified work under different license, such as By-sa or even Nc?

By comparing the lisence terms 4-b of by and by-sa, I got the impression that it is the case.

If so, I can, for example, translate the creative commons FAQ and
release it with proper attribution under public domain. (It sounds strange that the copyright notice is attached to the public domain text, though...)

Other people then are free to remove the attribution from the PD work.

best regards,

Tomo

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