Development of Creative Commons licenses

[wiki_tomos <wiki_tomos AT inter7.jp>]

>Daniel Carrera wrote:

>>drew Roberts wrote:

>> You could even give a text file to party A with a CC BY-SA license and to 
>> party B with an all rights reserved license. Party B might know about 
>> party 
>> A's license, but unless they can get a copy from A or someone else A has 
>> distributed to, they would not to my mind be able to pretend they have the 
>> BY-SA licensed version. (Anyone see where I can be wrong in this thought?)

>This depends on whether the license is attached to the *file* or the 
>"work". And this is ultimatley the question I'm trying to ask.

Hi. I am inclined to agree with drew. Instead of repeating what he has 
written, here are my formulations of the key questions and my answers. 

In writing this, I realize that my opinions are largely based on my 
understanding of "how lawyers and other experts think about these things." 
Quite vague ground, indeed. 

1.  Different resolution/ sound quality means different work?

In case of wav vs. mp3 licensing, if someone reproduce a wav file, or 
create a derivative work that cannot be created without high quality 
audio source in wav format, then that would is likely to be a copyright 
violation. 

What is licensed is certain rights in all the creative expression 
fixed in the mp3 file, but some more subtle creative expressions are fixed 
in wav file only. The latter is not licensed. 

In some cases, it would be difficult to tell if one particular derivative 
work is created from .wav without permission or created within the freedom 
granted by the CC license for the mp3 version. But that pragmatic 
difficulty I guess is not the focus of the question. 


2. Work / File distinction 

Some files of digital creative works are often times equally authentic and 
just the same. So if one file is under a CreativeCommons license, how come 
other, exact same file could be unlicensed? 

I think it is somewhat like different copies of the same book (same edition, 
from the same publisher) that are priced differently in different locations. 

Using drew's example each copy of the same text is, in CC's license term, 
different "Work," I suppose. In a more ordinary sense of the word, each 
copy of the same text is the same work, just different copies. 

Again, I am not a lawyer, so I might well be wrong on all these. 

Tomos