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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Watanabe Tomoaki" <tomoaki_watanabe_cc AT hotmail.com>
  • To: cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Is cc-by a viral license?
  • Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 22:08:00 +0000

Thomas;

Thank you very much for sharing your opinion with me. That prompted me to read the license again, think, and well, came to a different view...(different from the one I had, as well as the one you suggested.)

So may I offer a different take?
As I see, it seems there is no provision in the CC-by license term to prohibit the creator of a certain type of Derivative Work from releasing that Derivative Work under public domain, or any other license that the person prefer.

The types of Derivative Works that I am talking about is "translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation"- the list of specific activities that is specified as Derivative Work in the license.
I am not sure if public display, public performance, and public digital performance are also defined as "Derivative Work" in the license. In either case, I think my opinion does not apply to this group of Derivative Works. Those Derivative Works seem to have to be released always under the same term - CC-by.
But for other types of Derivative Works such as translation, fictionalization, etc., the license puts a lot less restrictions. These types of Derivative Works are restricted mostly by 4b, not 4a of the license. (The only exception is the requirement of "removal of attribution"at the very end of 4a. that specifically applies to Derivative Works.)
And the 4b requires that "keep intact all copyright notices for the Work"but not the license terms.
4a, which does not seem to apply to translation, fictionalization, etc., requires "You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties."

So, combined, I get the impression that while things like public performance of the (original) Work has to be under the same license term, things like translation and fictionalization is not restricted at all in terms of the choice of license. As a result, one can choose public domain or some others.
For example, I know there are some people who translated creative commons web pages. Those translated CC web pages are released under CC-by. Is it okay for those people to release translated web pages as public domain?
This has been kind of an unanswered question so far, and I thought the answer could be yes...but I could well be wrong... hope someone could give me some more insights.
best,
Tomos

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  • Re: Is cc-by a viral license?, Thomas Uwe Gruettmueller, 11/01/2003
    • <Possible follow-up(s)>
    • Is cc-by a viral license?, Watanabe Tomoaki, 11/02/2003

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