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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] CC-BY of Wiki-Content - must I name ALL authors?

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Erik Moeller <erik_moeller AT gmx.de>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] CC-BY of Wiki-Content - must I name ALL authors?
  • Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 03:12:02 +0200

Evan Prodromou:

Let's say that you start a wiki page; and I later edit the page. The
edited page is a derivative work*. If it's licensed under the same
license (not necessarily the case with cc-by, but let's gloss over that
for now), my derivative work requires attribution to me, and my use of
your work in making that derivative requires attribution to you.

Your interpretation may be correct. It helped me to think of derivative works as "patches" to the original work, with each "patch" being a work with an "original author" who must be credited. In effect, a wiki page with 100 authors and 100 revisions would then be the sum of its patches, 100 mini-works, each licensed under CC-BY. (CC-BY would theoretically allow the patches to be under different licenses, too, while CC-BY-SA would not.)

Or, more accurately, one could say that it is necessary to attribute the authors of all patches that are necessary to produce the resulting final work (so you could choose not to attribute vandals or edit warriors whose work has not persisted).

If that is the correct interpretation, then it would surely help if both the license text and the "human-readable version" would be clarified on the matter of collaborative works. Currently,

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

simply states that "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor." and says nothing about works by multiple authors.

Best,

Erik
(derivative copyright is giving me more headaches than time travel)




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