Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Todd A. Jacobs" <nospam AT codegnome.org>]

On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 10:55:35AM -0500, Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock wrote:

> I know how subjective fair use decisions are, so I fear that I already
> know the answer, but: Is it permissible to use a CC license in this
> context?

I can't comment on whether or not the included material is considered
fair use or not. However, if your professor is the owner of the
documentary, he can certainly license *his* documentary any way he
likes.

I think you really have two questions here:

    1. Is his use of material fair use? Probably, but if he's at all
    doubtful, pay the ambulance chasers.

    2. If he has rights to a work, can he distribute it under a CC
    license? If he's got all the rights, including the right to transfer
    or assign rights to his collective work (e.g. the documentary), then
    that should be fine.

I think where this sort of thing becomes problematic is if someone has
enough rights to license the work as a whole, but components of the
collected work can be extracted and used out-of-context, e.g. ripping
sound tracks from a movie and making an album.

This is one of those questions that is highly dependent on answers to
questions like "how much is 'fair' for fair use," "what is a collective
work," "what rights were granted," and other such thorny issues. 

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