Development of Creative Commons licenses

[James Grimmelmann <james.grimmelmann AT yale.edu>]

At 07:40 AM 8/14/2004, James Martin wrote:

> I am interested in licensing content from my blog. I do not want the 
> content to be altered. However, I wouldn't mind if someone included an 
> unmodified blog entry of mine in an essay of his. Would "No Derivatives" 
> allow this?

No, it would not, with one significant exception.  The NonCommercial 
licenses do not allow derivative works.  My understanding is that any work 
with enough other content (such as a line-by-line editorial analysis or 
such elaboration) to be separately copyrightable is, if it copies your blog 
entry, a derivative work of that blog entry.

The human-readable Commons Deed says something similar in its language, 
that "You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work."  "Build upon" 
is the operative phrase here.

The exception is for collective works, which the license (following U.S. 
copyright law) defines as "a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, 
or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate 
and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective 
whole."  So a compendium of several blog posts would be allowed.

> Further, I wouldn't mind if someone quoted only part of a blog entry, as 
> long as it wasn't modified. Would "No Derivatives" allow that?

Again, no.  The selective quotation is, in fact, more of an alteration than 
just adding new material.  It's "even more" of a derivative work than the 
above scenario.

> If not, is there a way to specify those conditions (or the first if not 
> the second)?

Note that, no matter what you specify, you can never take away the fair use 
rights of others.  Depending on the context and length of the quotation, I 
think it's very likely that your second scenario would constitute fair use, 
and would always be okay, no matter what license you use.

I am not a lawyer and I do not speak for Creative Commons.

James