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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Clarification for Non-Derivative License

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: David Chart <bydosa AT davidchart.com>
  • To: Development of Creative Commons licenses <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Clarification for Non-Derivative License
  • Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2012 12:15:43 +0900


On 2012/01/06, at 5:11, Sarah Pearson wrote:

> The way the licenses currently work, the question of what constitutes a
> derivative/adaptation is determined by reference to local law.

Which is, as you certainly know, a horrible, unclear mess in most
jurisdictions. And, as other people have pointed out, "local law" is often
not well-defined. (Even for me personally: I'm a UK citizen, legally and
physically resident in Japan, with a website served from the USA. Local law
is...?)

It might be a good idea to have an "avoidance of doubt" list that says what
is and isn't a derivative work, although the list would have to be developed
over time.

An idea might be to have a set of classes of changed works.

Class A would be changes of file format or equivalent, things that are really
not changes as far as the work itself is concerned, but only for its binary
representation.

Class B would be proofreading, spelling correction, straight translation,
playing something as a soundtrack (unchanged), putting a picture in a book,
greyscaling, colorising, and so on. Things that do change the work, but leave
it the same work.

Class C would be full-on transformations.

Then the licenses could specify which classes of changes were permitted: none
(must preserve binary equivalence), or any combination of the others. This
would effectively permit BY-DO-SA, if you only permitted Class C, and
released the work in physical form.

--
David Chart
http://www.davidchart.com/Blog/





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