Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Saturday 01 December 2007 20:22:55 Erik Moeller wrote:
> (This is a posting to multiple lists.)
>
> As you've probably read, the Wikimedia Foundation has agreed in
> principle to support an update of Wikipedia content from the GFDL to
> CC-BY-SA, pending a community approval of such a migration. The FSF
> and Creative Commons are supporting us to make this transition
> possible.
>
> One open issue is the way both the GFDL and CC-BY-SA deal with
> embedded media files like images, sounds, and videos. The FSF
> interprets the GFDL so that e.g. a photograph embedded into an article
> would require the article to be "copyleft" under the GFDL; Creative
> Commons does not interpret CC-BY-SA in this fashion (at least
> according to some public statements).
>
> The actual clauses are very similar, however, and I believe what is
> really needed is a license that gives authors the choice of "strong
> copyleft" for embedded media: the work into which the media are
> embedded (whether either work is text, sound, film, a rich media mix,
> or whatever) should be licensed under a copyleft license.
>
> Wikimedia could then allow contributors of multimedia to choose this
> license, and to change files under the GFDL (as opposed to text) to
> it.
>
> >From _my_ point of view, the key requirements are:
>
> * It should apply to any type of embedded media, i.e. not limited just
> to photos embedded into text;
> * It should, in principle, be very similar to the CC-BY-SA license,
> except for its provision on "Collections";
> * It should be adaptable to as many legal frameworks as possible;
> * IMPORTANT - I believe it should allow mixing of similar licenses,
> e.g. CC-BY-SA into BSD -- the Definition of Free Cultural Works
> endorsed by Wikimedia could be a guideline as to which licenses can be
> mixed: http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
>
> I would like to kickstart the discussion to get a first for such a
> license - it could be called CC-BY-SA+ - written as soon as possible.
>
> :-) Perhaps we should have a dedicated mailing list where stakeholders
>
> from multiple projects can discuss it?

My first cut, and I have put this forward before, is that we key off of 
a "copyright arising" concept.

If you use my CC BY-SA+ work (to use your terminology here althoug this may 
conflict with the recent CC Plus (+?) stuff) then in the case of a non 
derivative, if a copyright arises in the work that my work is used in, then 
the new work must be licensed CC BY-SA+...

Unfortunately, we will have to word it in some such way as copyrights can 
arise even if the creator thinks they are not entotled to one. Correct? And 
so they would have to license using language along the line of "If any 
copyright exists in this work of mine, I hereby license it under Cc BY-SA+.

We could easily let the work when seperated not be under the license. Along 
the lines of how the GPL does.

For those who tink this cannot be done unless the new work is in some way a 
derivative, I suggest that this requirement can be keyed to the right to copy 
instead of the right to make derivatives. Is that clear?
>
> Best,
> Erik Möller
> Member of the Board, Wikimedia Foundation

all the best,

drew