Development of Creative Commons licenses

[wiki_tomos <wiki_tomos AT inter7.jp>]

Wow. What an amount of discussion within a matter of hours.. 

WAV and mp3 are different works when wav file contains extra 
amount of creative expression fixed. Evan somehow seems to take the 
assumption that WAV and mp3 just sounds the same. I don't. And 
possibly that is the only difference between Evan and I. 

I assume Evan will agree with me that if the WAV version presents 
more details that are minimally creative (as to be copyrightable) 
are missing from mp3 version, then the CC license covering the 
mp3 file does not grant any permission about those details. 

drew seems to suggest that different file formats are different 
"expressions." I think the file formats do not always equate with 
different expressions. 

This email of mine is the same work even if it is printed 
with black ink, on a screen, or typewrited. The creativity 
of the text usually does not depend at all on the medium 
it is printed/ fixed. Likewise, a sound recording does not 
automatically become a different work simply because you 
record it on a tape or CD, or in mp3 or WAV. If they sounds 
the same, they are the same work. 

Assuming that some more creative expression exists in higher 
resolution photos than low-res ones, I still think they are 
different works. Just getting a license for low-res photo does not 
grant you at all to freely use creative expression fixed only 
in the high-res version. (Come to think of it, I am not sure 
if Evan agree with this..)

Daniel seems to think that PDF (non-editable) and OpenOffice 
(editable) versions of a text are different works. I disagree 
for the same reason. Unless there is some specific reason to believe 
that the editability is "creative" part of the work, they are 
just the same texts. (In addition, I think things like usefulness, 
and convenience do not in most cases count as part of creativity). 
So if I get a permission to modify, copy, and perform the text,  
then I have the same set of permission with both the PDF and 
OpenOffice version. 

Back to the Magnatune's case, if their WAV files contain 
extra creative details that are missing from the mp3 versions, 
then you cannot freely distribute the WAV files. 

Now, I have not looked into copyright laws other than US and Japan. 
And I try to think in terms of US copyright law here. But of course, 
I am not a lawyer, so I could well be wrong on all these points. 

Regards, 

Tomos