Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Saturday 21 January 2012 12:59:41 Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:32:13 -0500 drew Roberts wrote:
> > On Wednesday 11 January 2012 17:19:13 Francesco Poli wrote:
> > > On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 10:13:33 -0500 drew Roberts wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > > > And if you never had latex yourself in the first place?
> > >
> > > The definition of source is flexible enough to cope with this scenario.
> > >
> > > If a recipient is not able or not willing to use LaTeX in order to
> > > modify the source, he/she may take the work in some other form (in PDF
> > > format, for instance), possibly convert it into another form, and
> > > modify it in that other form.
>
> [...]
>
> > No, you are missing the point here. The original author never had latex
> > to begin with. Perhaps he wrote it out longhand with ink on foolscap
> > paper and scanned it in. Or took a photo of it.
>
> In that case the source code is clearly *not* LaTeX code.
> It never was in the first place.
>
> Again, the source code is the preferred form for making modifications
> to the work.
> If the work is a scan or a photograph of something written by hand, the
> preferred form for making modifications to the scan or to the photo is
> the scan or photo itself in a preferred format.
>
> Before someone says that the actual source is the physical paper with
> the ink on it, please let's not confuse an object with a photograph of
> it: they are not the same work, since taking a picture is not a purely
> "mechanical" format-conversion operation.
> The physical object is what is needed to take another different
> photograph of it (that is to say: to re-create a similar work, not to
> modify the work), while the digital photograph itself (in a preferred
> format) is what is preferred to make modifications to the photograph.

I will try one more time.

Lets consider a photocopy of a hand written poem?

And then a photocopy of that copy and so on.

In each case only one copy is made.

The original poem on paper is clearly marked BY-SA.

What is the source for these pieces of paper? We are going to have increasing 
degradation. It seems obvious that each person getting a copy would prefer 
the instance that his copy was made from to the copy received.

Another question is who gets the call as to what is the preferred format for 
working with the distributed work? Is it always what the person getting the 
licensed work had to work with?

all the best,

drew