Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

Keith Coleman wrote:
> Let's say I combine a worked issued under a Sampling license with a work 
> issued under a BY-NC-SA v2 license. Sampling permits Sharing but does 
> not permit Distribution, a condition which is MORE restrictive than 
> BY-NC-SA's permission of NonCommercial Distribution but LESS restrictive 
> than BY-NC-SA's permission of only NonCommercial Derivatives. (The 
> matter is additionally complicated by the unidimensiality of the CC 
> metadata, wherein every clause or no clause is affected by things like 
> "requires noncommercial.")

Actually Sampling doesn't permit verbatim distribution at all.  You must 
be thinking of Sampling+, which permits non-commercial distribution 
("Sharing" in the metadata, which means "non-commercial distribution" to 
work around the problem you mention above -- we can't have a 
NonCommercial property, as that applies to all others, and Sampling does 
allow commercial transformative derivative works).

Anyway, in terms of distribution Sampling+ and BY-NC-SA are equivalent 
AFAICT -- they both allow non-commercial distribution.  For derivative 
works they have different restrictions -- Sampling+ requires that 
derivative uses must be transformative, BY-NC-SA requires that 
derivative uses must not be commercial.

None of that really matters for your question though --

> So under which license must I issue my derivative work?

BY-NC-SA.  Your use of the work issued under a Sampling license must be 
transformative, but otherwise your work incorporating Sampling or 
Sampling+ material may be licensed under any license, including standard 
"all rights reserved" copyright.  BY-NC-SA requires you to release 
derivatives under By-NC-SA.

> Option 1: BY-NC-SA
> But this violoates BY-NC-SA's use-the-most-restrictive clause regarding 
> combined works.

I think this was only intended to apply to combining SA licenses, but it 
is going away in the final 2.0 licenses anyway -- you have to use the 
same SA license.

IANAL, etc.

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