Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Sarah Pearson <sarah AT creativecommons.org>]

This second discussion prompt relates to the differences in the scope of the two licenses.

The FAL licenses only copyright, though licensors are prohibited from using related rights to prevent exercise of the permissions granted by the license. BY-SA 4.0, on the other hand, licenses some rights beyond copyright, such as sui generis database rights and neighboring rights. Unlike the FAL, BY-SA requires compliance with its conditions (attribution, ShareAlike) even when those other rights, and not copyright, are implicated.

For compatibility purposes, when someone takes a BY-SA work, adapts it, and then applies the FAL, there is a possibility that a downstream user may not realize they need to attribute and ShareAlike when they share the work in a way that implicates only sui generis database or neighboring rights and not copyright. As a practical matter, however, we feel this is unlikely to be a major problem given that most reusers will either be unwilling or unable to discern when one type of right is implicated but not another closely related right. Accordingly, most reusers who are concerned about doing the right thing are likely to attribute and/or ShareAlike where there is uncertainty.

Thoughts? Your input would be much appreciated.

best,
Sarah

Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
Senior Counsel, Creative Commons
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