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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Changes to attribution: your attention wanted

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro AT gmail.com>
  • To: Development of Creative Commons licenses <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Changes to attribution: your attention wanted
  • Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2012 09:22:50 +0300

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 7:02 AM, Kat Walsh <kat AT creativecommons.org> wrote:
> We wanted to draw your attention to some of the changes in the
> attribution section of 4.0 that we don't think have gotten a lot of
> attention or feedback--some of these are fairly significant changes
> from 3.0, and we want to pull them out, explain their reasoning and
> implications, and get feedback before we get any further into the
> process.

I am not absolutely sure, but this may be my first post on this
mailing list. First let me say that all the changes to 3.0 I am
*not* commenting on, I heartily endorse, and resoundingly
applaud! Brava! & Bravo!

>
> Identifying changes to the work:
>
> This one does not appear in 4.0d2--it is a new suggestion in the
> current internal draft, and something we'd like to hear community
> opinion on: "if You Share Adapted Material, You must indicate the
> Licensed Material was used and describe the changes made." (This would
> also be "reasonable to the medium, means, and context", as the other
> attribution information would be.)
>
> This appears in several other free licenses, and helps distinguish the
> contributions of each authors or group of authors. For example, a
> translation might bear the note "translated into Spanish by X".
> However, we also see it potentially presents problems in complying.
>
> There are a few specific questions we'd really like to hear answers to:
>
> 1. What existing uses of the licenses would this break or make
> extremely difficult, and how could it be improved?
> 2. What kind of description should be required: should a verbal
> description be required, or is the ability to see and compare the
> changes enough?
> 3. Is this desirable to put in the license at all, or should it simply
> be a best practice?
>
> Thanks for your thoughtful attention and input.

I don't have a one size fits all comment on the general principle
relating to these issues in particular as a class. I rather think the
problem is the vast variety of imaginable case where this stuff
might come into play, it is rather open-ended and fuzzy around
the edges. I am sure you will remember the situation where
NPG claimed that by making professional quality choices as
to lighting, angle of photography and cropping and such, it was
in fact creating a copyrightable new work.

On the gripping hand translations quite frequently (but not always)
easily pass through to the realm of being genuine unique artistic
creations in their own right, even if not independent of the source
language version. It is a real poser, how to deal with this ambiguity.

My personal inclination would be to not discourage the impulse
to just embrace the ambiguity and leave well enough alone and
explain a reasonable gamut of best practises in specific contexts.

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]




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