Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Sarah Pearson <sarah AT creativecommons.org>]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 10:19 PM, Engel Nyst <engel.nyst AT gmail.com> wrote:

How about reusers interested to make proprietary what is "left out" from
CC-BY-SA 4.0 scope when the original material is licensed to FAL? Does
share-alike vanish in the relicensing?


I think the problem is, magical relicensing is typically a dual-, tri-
licensing of the same work. This situation seems somewhat different,
because of the difference in rights being licensed, and I'd like to
understand exactly how, and with what consequences.


There are several (theoretical, maybe crazy) options: licensing to FAL
refers to the whole work, including databases; licensing to FAL refers
to the copyrighted work, leaving databases under CC-BY-SA 4.0 (give or
take some copyright in the "originality" of the assembly), or it cancels
CC-BY-SA in the adaptation and leaving databases unlicensed in the
distribution of adapted material. Is there another option?

Section 4(b) declares a combination of data Adapted Material. The
definition of Licensed Rights refers to Copyright and Similar Rights,
which are defined at their turn to /include/ Sui-Generis Database
Rights. The clause relicensing to FAL refers to Licensed Rights, so
includes database rights.

Looks like CC-BY-SA vanishes for database rights, and there's nothing at
the other end to replace them with.

Which is the intended interpretation and why?

My email on the other thread may have answered this question, but just in case... When a BY-SA 4.0 work is adapted and the FAL is applied, both licenses apply to the adaptation. BY-SA applies to the rights the original author has in the new work, and the FAL applies to the rights the adapter has in the work. As explained on the other thread, downstream reusers of the adaptation can refer to the FAL to discern how to attribute and ShareAlike (thanks to 2a5B). But otherwise, BY-SA and the FAL apply to the new work and reusers must refer back to BY-SA whenever they are trying to determine the terms and conditions that apply to the particular rights the original author has in the work. That means the scope of the rights being licensed by the original author (the "Licensed Rights" as defined in BY-SA 4.0) does not change when the FAL is applied to the adaptation.

Note that Section 2a5B attempts to make this clear by stating that reusers can refer to the "Adapter's License" (i.e. the FAL in this case) when they exercise the "Licensed Rights," which as you correctly noted include database rights. In other words, reusers can attribute in the manner specified by the FAL when they implicate the BY-SA author's database rights.

I hope that answers your question. This is a tricky area, so please let me know if any of the above is not clear.