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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Share-Alike with images

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Share-Alike with images
  • Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 14:42:51 -0500

Erik Moeller wrote:
On 2/5/07, James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net> wrote:
Making the SA licenses define the combined article as a "derivative
work" has two confusing consequences. First, it surprises some people
by imposing a stronger link between the text and photograph than they
may expect. Second, it gives "derivative work" a new and unexpected
meaning in the context, one that doesn't track the usual categories of
copyright law.

The license already explicitly defines movies that are time-sync'd
with music as a derivative work. I don't think the combination of,
say, a newspaper article with a photo is significantly different. In
both cases, one work is used to add to the information content of the
other, while the original works are not significantly altered. In
fact, I think this distinction (if it does exist) is highly
counterintuitive for authors.

The integration between a piece of music and the video to which it is time-synchronized is much tighter and involves more attention to the creative structure of the music than attaching an image to an article does. That's the critical element of synchronization, that particular moments of the one line up with particular moments of the other. There are certainly works in which words and pictures are integrated in that way -- comics and other sequential art come to mind -- but pictures accompanying an article typically don't have that closer correspondence.

But that's neither here nor there.

I still think that it's a bad idea to import too many new concepts into the license's definition of the term "derivative work." I would be happy to be informed that the picture+article combination *is* a derivative work under U.S. copyright law. I can definitely see strong arguments that it is.

James




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