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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] "commercial" use of Att/Share-alike materials

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Peter Brink <peter.brink AT brinkdata.se>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] "commercial" use of Att/Share-alike materials
  • Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 12:14:59 +0200

Hannes skrev:
> I'm also getting even more confused because of this particular comic
> strip. When reading the parts of the legal code that regards SA I also
> get the impression that collective works are not subject to the SA
> terms as are derivative works. How come the comics suggests that
> they are, or is not the "collage" in their example clearly a
> collective work?
>
> I'm referring to the topmost example on this webpage:
> http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/comics4
>

A work is any kind of expression of an idea, thought, concept or piece of fact that qualifies for copyright protection.

A derivative work is a work that transforms the expressions found in another work. If a work reuses expressions from another work that are not in themselves works then the result is _not_ a derivative work.

A collage may or may not be a derivative work. It all depends on whether the parts "borrowed" from other works are identifiable as parts of a specific work. For example, if I take three photos showing nature scenery and cut of the upper, sky, parts and use these in a collage, then I have most likely not used another work. The pieces of sky photos I've used are most likely not, in themselves, original works of authorship.

If I took 100 photos and cut those in tiny pieces and used those tiny pieces to create a mosaic, have I then created a derivative work based on the 100 photos? Does it matter whether I use all or just a part of all the tiny pieces?

As long as you cannot "see" or identify any of the 100 photos in my mosaic then the answer to both of the questions is no.

As for collective works, a collection of pictures is a collective work; every picture is an independent work. You would of course need the permission from all copyright holders to publish the collection. It's only when you transform a set of pictures into a new picture you create a derivative work based on those pictures.

/Peter Brink







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