Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Sincaglia, Nicolas" <nsincaglia AT musicnow.com>]

>1.  Different resolution/ sound quality means different work?
No. This is not correct. Copyright law does not make any mention of file 
formats or resolution. Neither does the CC licenses. 
 
"Under the 1976 Copyright Act an author is protected as soon as the work is 
recorded in some concrete way, since the Act protects all expressions upon 
fixation in a tangible medium." 
 
So what is protected by copyright law and licensed under CC is not the 
tangible medium but the expression. The expression is the work. The only role 
the tangible medium plays in copyright law is it's existance marks the 
beginning of ones legal protection for the creative expression.
 
(e.g. If you write a new song and sing it live without ever having recorded 
it in any tangible form, you don't have legal protection for that song. If 
you record it at the live performance or write down the chords and lyrics at 
home on a piece of paper prior to the show, you will have legal protection 
for that song)

        -----Original Message----- 
        From: cc-licenses-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of wiki_tomos 
        Sent: Mon 11/21/2005 8:38 PM 
        To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts 
        Cc: 
        Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Case study: Magnatune
        
        

        >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
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