Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera AT zmsl.com>]

wiki_tomos wrote:
> 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. 

This might be a valid argument. In addition, you can say that the MP3 is 
a derivative of the WAV and that makes them different. Assuming this 
interpretation is correct, that would mean that, back to the OpenOffice 
user guide example:

* I can give you a PDF version under CC and sell you the OpenDocument 
version without CC.
(because the PDF derives from the OpenDocumnet original)

* I CANNOT do the converse. If I give you the OpenDocument file under a 
CC license, and sell you a PDF file, I cannot tell you that you can't 
use the PDF file under the CC terms.

Why? Because all the expression in the OpenDocument file is contained in 
the PDF file, and because the PDF file is a derivative.

This is the apparent consequence of attaching the license to "the work" 
instead of "the file". It sort of makes sense in practice, because you 
could perfectly well grab the OpenDocument file and make your own PDF, 
or grab the WAV file and make an MP3; but you can't go in the other 
direction.

> 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. 

Irrelevant. The price has nothing to do with the license. I can sell you 
OpenOffice.org for $10 or you can download it for free. The work itself, 
OpenOffice.org, is still LGPL.

Cheers,
Daniel.
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