Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT bad.dynu.ca>]

On Mon, 2005-21-11 at 21:26 +0000, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> I assume you're familiar with the CC-friendly record label, Magnatune:
>
> http://magnatune.com/
>
> They offer free MP3s of all their albums under a Creative Commons 
> license and you can buy CD-quality WAV files.
>
> Practical question:  Are the WAV files automatically under the same CC 
> license?
I am not a lawyer, but I think that a US court would not accept the claim that a work encoded in one format is not the same work encoded in a different format.

In other words, if the Work is licensed under a CC license, I don't think the format matters. Making a business model out of the difference between digital formats seems unwise. (I can see differences between digital and physical formats being useful, though -- say, a painter who gives away digital copies of their paintings but sells the physical objects.)

That said, I hope that Magnatune (a CC poster boy) is getting better legal advice than mine. My guess is that they're fine with people sharing the WAV files.

~Evan