Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Monday 05 February 2007 10:24 am, James Grimmelmann wrote:
> rob AT robmyers.org wrote:
> > Quoting Erik Moeller <erik AT wikimedia.org>:
> >> I think the license is currently ambiguous about such uses. However, I
> >> think it would be clearly in line with the copyleft philosophy to
> >> demand free licensing of the combined whole in such a case (not in the
> >> case of mere aggregation within e.g. a collection of photos where
> >> there's no semantic relationship between them). In my discussions with
> >> photographers, I've found that many use NC licenses because they worry
> >> about commercial exploitation of their works. If we could clarify
> >> copyleft in the context of images, many of these fears could be
> >> alleviated.
> >
> > I think that as long as you don't do anything to the image, you can use
> > it as an
> > illustration for your proprietary article for example. This often
> > surprises people, but it makes sense from the point of view of how
> > copyright works (IANAL). The combination is collective/aggregate, not
> > derivative. A magazine article doesn't become a derivative work of a
> > photograph because it is illustrated with it. ShareAlike is triggered by
> > derivation, not
> > collection, and
> > in fact this is the same for the GPL.
> >
> > But from the point of view of people's expectations and the ethical
> > coherency of
> > Free Culture this is ridiculous. Forget the legal implementation of
> > copyleft in
> > the GPL (which comes after the fact of what copyleft is for ethically).
> > People just don't expect to see their BY-SA photographs "linked" to
> > proprietary articles any more than they expect to see their GPL-ed
> > libraries linked to Word.
>
> 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 CC licenses have generally tracked the common
> definitions of copyright law, reducing both kinds of confusion.
>
> Given this, I don't know that using the definitions in the SA license to
> accomplish this goal is a good idea.  The more unusual uses there are
> for familiar terms, the more confusing and complex  the license becomes.
>   If the SA license is going to go down this route, it would be better
> to coin a new term and give it a from-the-top definition of its own.

That would be fine right. Just state that mere aggregation is not allowed. 
State that although the overall work is not a derivative, SA works can only 
be aggregated with other works of like license and in works of like license.

Something along those lines.

I think it would be worth our while to consider this option. Whether this 
should result in SA-Strong and SA-Weak licenses or just one SA license is 
another issue but should probably also be discussed if any discussion 
proceeds.
>
> James

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)