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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Case study: Magnatune

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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] Case study: Magnatune
  • Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 19:58:19 +0100

There seems to be some serious confusion about the meaning of the concepts of a “work” and of a “derivative work”.

A “work” is any kind of expression of a thought, idea or concept which has been created by a human being; in some countries (like the U.S.) it needs to be fixed in a tangible medium, but in most countries it does not.

It’s in fact easier to say what a work is not, than to exactly define what it is:

* The work is not the physical form of the expression.
* The work is not the ideas, thoughts, facts or concepts expressed.
* The work is not the style, manner or method of expression.

A book, a pdf-file, a text-file or an openoffice-file containing the same expression are all _copies_ of the same work.

A “derivative work” is a transformation of a work, such as a translation, adaptation, arrangement of music or any other possible alteration of a literary or artistic work.

Daniel Carrera asks a few questions about the scope of a cc-license. When a licensor licenses a work under a cc-license does that mean that he licenses the work as cast into a particular physical form or does he offer a license for all the possible physical forms the work that he has and/or will create?

This is an interesting question. IMO the license only applies to the particular physical form of a work that has a cc-license attached to it. My reason for this line of reasoning is that the license is non-exclusive, meaning that the copyright holder retains the full copyright of the work; he can create more copies of the work and create derivative works based on the work. He can offer these under any terms he wish. If he wishes to license an MP3 version of a piece of music of his under a cc-license _and_ sell a WAV version, he is free to do so. The WAV file would then _not_ be available under the cc-license.

It would not be fair to demand that the copyright holder would _have_ to make all versions of a work available under the same license just because he has chosen to license a particular physical form of that work under a cc-license. In our example above the downstream user is free to convert (i.e. copy) the MP3 file into another format if he should wish to, so there is no need to treat all original versions of a work as licensed under the same license.


/Peter Brink




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