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  • From: Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>
  • To: cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-licenses] Scope Of ShareAlike in 4.0
  • Date: Tue, 08 May 2012 22:13:37 +0100

I would like to discuss the scope of ShareAlike in 4.0d1.


I believe that ShareAlike should do the following things:

A. Protect the ability to quote and critique under fair use within a ShareAlike work, to the degree that fair use / fair dealing exists in any given jurisdiction.

B. Prevent the mixing of ShareAlike and non-sharealike materials in the same work or usage, encouraging work to be placed under ShareAlike in its entirety whenever it possibly can be and preventing its use where it cannot be.

I'm trying to understand the extent to which it is possible for SA to achieve this in principle and the extent to which 4.0d1 does so in practice.


Given this I have tried to think through how ShareAlike works in the following scenarios:

1. A commercial blogger posts a short science fiction story by another author on their blog in order to comment on it. The blog is licensed BY-NC-SA.

This should be allowed under Fair Use (just about) as criticism.

2. A student writes an essay critiquing a famous and still copyrighted artwork. They include illustrations of the artwork to support their critique. The essay is licensed BY-SA.

This should be allowed under Fair Use as criticism and academic use.

3. A games company licenses (for the sake of argument) the Star Wars franchise and produce a role-playing game rulebook featuring the characters and locations from that franchise. The game is licensed BY-SA *but* it is made clear that any text or images mentioning the characters and settings of the franchise are *not* BY-SA.

This results in a work that is hybrid free/non-free, but then the authors do not have any option to create a free work.

4. A games company designs their own generic fantasy setting (think Lord of The Rings / Narnia / Game Of Thrones / etc.) and produce a role-playing game rulebook featuring the characters and locations from that franchise. The game is licensed BY-SA *but* it is made clear that any text or images mentioning the characters and settings are *not* BY-SA.

This results in a work that is non-free, and the authors have *deliberately* structured the work to make it so. BY-SA should not allow this.

5. An author or magazine use a BY-SA image as an illustration for a story or article. The story or article is "all rights reserved".

This results in a non-free work using a BY-SA work as part of its presentation / value proposition. BY-SA should not allow this. It is the minimal case that photographers, Wikipedia, and Drew would all need to be covered by BY-SA.


So:

Firstly, have I described these scenarios correctly with regard to BY-NC-SA 4.0d1 and the ability to use copyrighted work under Berne?

Secondly, how can 1 and 2 be differentiated from 4 and 5, and does anyone other than me feel they should they be?

And thirdly, what about 3?


Thanks.

- Rob.




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