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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] BY-NC-SA (International) 3.0 Draft 1 Comments

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: rob AT robmyers.org
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>, Luis Villa <luis AT tieguy.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] BY-NC-SA (International) 3.0 Draft 1 Comments
  • Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:32:25 +0100

Quoting Luis Villa <luis AT tieguy.org>:

On 8/14/06, Peter Brink <peter.brink AT brinkdata.se> wrote:
Rob Myers skrev:
>
> For me personally the problem with "adaptation" is that it I'm used
> to a use of the word that is more limited than "derivative". So
> "adaptation" would just mean a television or film version of a book.
> And in fact the dictionary that I am looking at uses this definition.
> It does not mean a sample of a piece of music used to make another
> piece of music, for example.
>

If we take Sweden as an example, we will find that the Swedish
translation of "derivative" ("härlett") is a term that does not exist in
the Swedish copyright law. The term "adaptation" ("bearbetning") is the
term used in the legislation, in the legal literature, in case law etc.
So the term "adaptation", in an international perspective, tend to point
people in the right direction - at least as far as their national
legislation goes.

Part of the GPL's reasoning in getting rid of derivative was actually
to get rid of all the legal baggage around derivative, and use
something that they could define themselves. If 'adaptation' is a term
of art in European countries, perhaps it is best to avoid that as
well.

My understanding is that the reasoning behind GPL3 and CC 3 is slightly
different:

* GPL 3 is being made as independent as possible of any jurisdiction.

* CC 3 International is being written to use the language of the Berne
copyright
convention. The license states this explicitly

Berne uses both "derivative" and "adaptation". The latter is a sub-type of the
former. Given that Swedish law doesn't use the term "derivative" (and I don't
think UK law does either) I agree that it might be problematic to use this
word. And as I have previously mentioned I am also not sure that "adaptation"
is without problems, although it could be clarified by the license.

So yes, this may be a case where rather than using a word from Berne
that may be
problematic a GPL-3-style generic phrase should be used. Something like "a new
work incorporating or transforming some or all of the licensed work" or "any
use of the work that would cause a new copyrighted work to be produced
(such as
sampling, translation or adaptation)". But this may look strange if the
rest of
the license is written in Berne-ese.

- Rob.





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