Development of Creative Commons licenses

[James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 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.

The integration between a piece of music and the video to which it is 
time-synchronized is much tighter and involves more attention to the 
creative structure of the music than attaching an image to an article 
does.  That's the critical element of synchronization, that particular 
moments of the one line up with particular moments of the other.  There 
are certainly works in which words and pictures are integrated in that 
way -- comics and other sequential art come to mind -- but pictures 
accompanying an article typically don't have that closer correspondence.

But that's neither here nor there.

I still think that it's a bad idea to import too many new concepts into 
the license's definition of the term "derivative work."  I would be 
happy to be informed that the picture+article combination *is* a 
derivative work under U.S. copyright law.  I can definitely see strong 
arguments that it is.

James