Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

I am not a lawyer. this is not legal advice.

> 1.    Let's say I publish an illustration/photo (in the form of a jpg) to
> the web using the creative commons "by attribution, non commercial"
> license.
> For arguments sake, let's say it's an illustration is of a taxi cab next
> to
> a phone booth. Is a licensee allowed to take a portion of the work (i.e.
> crop out the taxi cab and leave the rest) then re-use it in another work
> (post it on their web site, use it in a collage etc.) or would they
> require
> a Sampling license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/nc-sampling+/1.0/)
> to be allowed to do this? I other words, is sampling NOT allowed unless
> you
> have a sampling license?

Think of the CC licenses as listing what other users MUST do, and anything
that is NOT listed is allowed. i.e. cc-Attribution-NonCommercial means
that other people MUST attribute and MUST use it for noncommercial uses
only. Any other right granted under copyright is released by the author
and can be used by anyone else. The right to create derivative works is
normal an author's exclusive right. CC-BY-NC gives that right away. 
Another way to look at it is that the longer the license alphabet soup,
the closer the license is to "All Rights Reserved".

Also, because licenses specify what a user MUST do and because all other
rights are released, a downstream user can create a derivative and
restrict the rights you released on his version. i.e. You license a work
CC-BY. Alice makes a derivative and licenses it CC-BY-NC. Bob takes that
work and licenses it CC-BY-NC-ND. The only license option that prevents
downstream restrictions like this is ShareAlike, which effectively "locks
in" the license so that all derivatives must have the same license as the
original.

> 2.    How does the "by attribution, non commercial", (or for that matter
> the "by attribution, sampling, non commercial") license deal with the
> following scenario. Let's say that this same photo/illustration also
> included a small mention at the bottom of the jpg stating "Creative
> Commons
> some rights reserved" along with the creator's web site URL and the URI to
> the license in question. In cropping the taxi portion of the jpg, this
> copy
> is lost which would seem to contradict the baseline right "to keep any
> copyright notice intact on all copies of your work;" Is this in fact a
> contradiction of this baseline right? Would it be sufficient for the
> licensee to reproduce the "Creative Commons, some rights reserved" + the
> creator's URL + URI to, in effect, match the copyright notice that was
> removed?

I don't think that the wording for keeping copyright notices "in place"
means you cannot move text around it, change it's color, font size, and
modifiers like "bold", "italic", etc. I would think it simply means that
the copyright notice must be kept in the same file, attached to the same
work. It would be an interesting interpretation of the license if I could
"frame" an image with copyright notices all around the outside, license it
CC-BY, but claim that no one can modify my "frame" of notices because it
will break the license. I'd call it absurd. But that doesn't mean someone
couldn't try to sue for it.


> the various licenses, no one seems to have taken the time to deal with the
> specific questions that licensees may have about attribution. In fact,

Basically, attribution for CC stuff has some wiggle room.
the license says you must give attribution
"in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable
authorship credit." and "you must keep intact all copyright
notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium
or means You are utilizing" the name, title, and URL.

I've been told that "reasonable to the medium" has some legal
significance, what exactly, I still don't know, but apparently
there have been attrition cases before CC came around that
established certain mediums must give attribution in certain
ways. I don't htink all mediums ahve that requirement though.
So, I think some mediums allow someone to create a derivative
and NOT attribute themselves or the original author.

The fallback for this is the part that says
"you must keep all copyright notices in place"
and "You must include a copy of, or the Uniform
Resource Identifier for, this License with every copy"

meaning if the downstream person wants NO attribution
for his version, he still must keep your notices in place,
and he must include the license or a URL to the license.

(which makes me wonder what happens if the downstream
author decides to use a more restrictive license...)

If, on the other hand, the downstream person gives
himself LOTS of attribution, splashes his name all
over the place about his derivative work, then
the "in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable
authorship credit" part should require them to attribute
you as loudly as he attributes himself.

Hope that helps
-- 
Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP laws
http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/