Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

Stephen Woodward said:
>  what if the root of the creation is physical,
> and that interferes with the cc licensing of its digital
> version,

IANAL

any artistic expression
(be it words, pictures, painting, photo, music, video)
put into any fixed form
(be it paper, parchment, oil, canvas, CompactDisc, harddrive)

satisfies the requirement to grant you copyright to that expression.

You then have the exclusive rights to copy, distribute, and
derive that >expression<. The copyright is tied to the
specific expression, not the specific physical instance.

So, when you buy a paperback at the bookstore,
the copyright stays with the author.
you simply get a physical form of the artistic expression.
just because you bought the book doesn't mean
you can now make copies and sell it to other people.

So, when you put oil paint on canvas, you own the copyright
to that expression. The canvas becomes an instance of that
expression, and if you sell the canvas to someone, you still
hold the copyright to the expression. You can create
another oil/canvas version of the painting, you can
scan it at high res and sell digital copies of it.
You can create a derived version of the image, modifying
and extending the artistic expression from the original
image.

The only gotcha to this is to make sure it is not
a work-for-hire. If someone commissions you to
create the oil painting, then they may have claim
to the copyright of the work, and you may not be
able to copy, distribute, or create derived versions
of the original.

If you create the work on your own, then you're OK.

If someone says "I'll pay you to paint an image of <blank>"
then they may claim copyright to teh work and you wont
be able to license it CC or whatever.

I think that answers your question.