Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

email AT greglondon.com wrote:
> I don't know if there is a "compile" equivalent with music
> or artwork or movies. If there is NOT, then you could have
> a NoDerivatives on a photo, but someone could include that
> in a coffee-table book of other photos. Songs could be placed
> verbatim on a CD collection. This is usually called "aggregating",
> putting a bunch of works in one location, but the act of doing 
> so does not qualify as >creating a derived work< of the individual
> pieces.

Aggregation is known as a collective work in the CC licenses.

> The open source initiative allows for NoDerivative licenses
> as long as the license allows for "patch files" to be included
> with the original work. You take the original unmodified work
> and a patch file that says "replace line 159 with this 'blah blah'"
> and run both of them through a program that creates a derived work.
>
> It may be tough to word this in a music or art license, but
> NoDerivedWork licenses that allow some kind of "patch" file
> should be OK. I just don't know if it is possible to create
> such a license.

I don't know about what licenses permit, but for some media and to a 
limited extent it's pretty easy to create a "patch" file.  For example, 
SMIL which contains directives to play certain portions of a work 
overlayed/interspersed with other works -- there is never any 
distribution of modified originals.  I imagine that such client-side 
remixing can go _much_ further.  Making a work available at all, to an 
extent, makes it "patchable".  I have no idea what the legal 
implications are.

--
  Mike Linksvayer
  http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people#21