Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

This question was spurred partly from a question in the NC thread, but 
mostly because I'm dealing with it on a project I'm working on.

I'm creating a set of illustrations to go along with an article.  Due to 
the nature of the blogging software, it's desireable to minimize the 
number of images.  I often do this by using multiple images in one, or 
"insets".  In my current project, some of the "insets" are copyrighted 
works whose use in my case is (IMHO anyway) "fair use" (they're images 
from movies which I am comparing to each other and to certain questions 
of archetypes in fiction and how they relate to certain philosophical 
ideas -- so they're valid "quotations for review purposes").  However, 
the big image in some cases is a CC-By-SA work (actually they may be all 
CC-By, I haven't checked through them all yet -- but it's possible).

Does the act of combining the images in this way constitute a violation 
of the copyleft? I understand that including images in a document is 
considered "mere aggregation" and so not affected by copyleft, and in my 
own mind, I'm still doing this (they're conceptually separate pictures, 
even though they are in a single JPG file).

Does it make a difference whether the images overlap (as in an inset) or 
are merely beside each other (an array)?

Just for reference, here's an existing example of what I mean by an "array":

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/files/nodes/1713/kusanagi_which_real.jpg

and here of "insets":

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/files/nodes/1366/fig_tucson2000.jpg

It seems like an interesting use case.  I dislike the idea of having to 
separate the material based on license/fair use, rather than for 
stylistic reasons, but of course, it is possible.

Opinions?

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com