Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Gavin Baker <gavin AT gavinbaker.com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

(I'm replying all, so apologies if this message is an intrusion. Since
my primary recipient is cc-licenses, I'll be very brief and direct.)

I share Erik's concern with the working of CC licenses in relation to
"embedded" media.

If I'm not mistaken, the CC licenses consider such a use a "collection"
(used under the right to copy, granted by all CC licenses) rather than a
"derivative work" (used under the right to modify -- only granted by
licenses without the No Derivatives clause, and subject to the Share
Alike clause under some licenses).

However, I don't think this is how users of the SA or ND licenses expect
the license to work. They understand and expect that their work might be
included in an archive alongside works of various licenses; they don't
consider this a derivative work. But when your photo is printed in a
magazine alongside text, the use feels very derivative. It feels like
the kind of use you were trying to prevent (ND) or to restrict to
similarly-licensed works (SA).

I am not a lawyer, but there must be a way to make the distinction
between an item in a database and a photograph on the page of a
magazine. I think that most users of CC licenses with the SA or ND
clauses would agree that the clause should work this way.

However, we should avoid the creation of a new license if at all
possible. I do not think it is necessary here. What we need is not
another license, but for the existing CC licenses to operate the way
their users would expect.

P.S. A hearty kudos to everyone who helped make CC/GFDL compatibility
possible!

- --
Gavin Baker
http://www.gavinbaker.com/
gavin AT gavinbaker.com


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?
> 
> Best,
> Erik Möller
> Member of the Board, Wikimedia Foundation
> _______________________________________________
> cc-licenses mailing list
> cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFHUh/ktLXQdLhFpekRAsPRAJ9gkTpZZfcQCzENGIpVyZdsWu+/ZgCdHQfh
zmbucB+vl9dU01P+1MiGfRg=
=u9kM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----