Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Erik Moeller" <erik AT wikimedia.org>]

On 2/5/07, James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net> wrote:
> Making the SA licenses define the combined article as a "derivative
> work" has two confusing consequences.  First, it surprises some people
> by imposing a stronger link between the text and photograph than they
> may expect.  Second, it gives "derivative work" a new and unexpected
> meaning in the context, one that doesn't track the usual categories of
> copyright law.

The license already explicitly defines movies that are time-sync'd
with music as a derivative work. I don't think the combination of,
say, a newspaper article with a photo is significantly different. In
both cases, one work is used to add to the information content of the
other, while the original works are not significantly altered. In
fact, I think this distinction (if it does exist) is highly
counterintuitive for authors.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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