Development of Creative Commons licenses

[wiki_tomos <wiki_tomos AT inter7.jp>]

I realized that the previous post I is based on a wrong approach. 
The question and overall conclusion is kind of similar, and the 
mistake would not affect the opinions of others that followed my 
post (like Rob's) but was not formulated correctly anyway. 

In the previous email, I was discussing "How can Alice follow 
typical license restrictions of CC-BY-SA and format the resulting 
work as a usable GFDL'd work so that she can release it under 
GFDL?" The question that should have been asked was "How can Alice 
follow GFDL's license requirements using the information present 
in a typical CC-BY-SA work?" I will illustrate some details of 
this rather technical question in the following, though not at lengh. 

When Alice releases a derivaive work created from Bob's CC-BY-SA'd 
work, Alice has to comply with the terms of GFDL, according to the 
proposed change. How can she do that? There are a number of questions 
when one compares GFDL's requirements and types of information 
necessary to fulfill those information on the one hand, and the 
types of information that a typical CC-BY-SA'd work contains.  

For example, she is supposed to create a History section, and it 
should contain things like names of previous authors, years they 
are created/modified. What if the Alice's work is a fifth generation 
derivative, deriving from Bob, who derived his work from Cathy's, 
who in turn derived her work from Doug's, who in turn used Ed's? 
How likely is it that Alice knows title's of all the previous works? 
Perhaps not much, given that CC-BY-SA does not seem to require 
preservation of such information. GFDL says Alice should take these 
pieces of information from "Title Page" or, when title page is absent, 
prominent place near the title of the work, before the main text of 
the work. It would be certainly possible for things like blog entry 
to have no Title Page, nor those pieces of information near the 
entry's title. 

Another example. Alice has to change the title of the work into 
something different from Bob's, and all other previous works 
(Cathy, Dough, and Ed's, that is), unless they gave permission 
for Alice to use the same title. Now what is the chance for 
Alice to know titles of previous works that her work derive 
from directly or indirectly? Again, not much. Does she have a 
permission to use the same title? Not explicity, though it is 
arguable that she has, given that CC-BY-SA license does not 
ever require one to change title. 

Just saying "if you want to release Derivative Work under GFDL, 
follow its requirements" does not adequately solve these 
difficult questions. GFDL assumes that the licensed work 
has certain structure, with certain information placed at certain 
part of the structure. Those assumptions do not necessarily 
apply well to a typical CC-BY-SA'd work. Thus some uncertainties. 
I think some of these should be addressed within the CC license, 
others in FAQ, and only a part of these kinds of questions/uncertainties 
should be left to the parties involved. The current proposal 
for change is insufficient in that regard, I thought. 

But again, I am not a lawyer, so my discussion here may be 
sloppy and wrong.

Best, 

Tomos