On 8/7/07, Mike Linksvayer ml@creativecommons.org wrote:
The entire question is whether an article containing a photo is a derivative work/adaption of the photo.
I don't think thats a matter open for question in the strict sense:
I create item X and offer it on the market. Item X contains item Y which is copyrighted by you. As a result Item X as a whole is encumbered by your copyright interest and can not be legally distributed without a license unless item Y is removed.
The open question is does the license in question permit this. Both the FDL and the CC-SA licenses have terms allowing collections/aggregations with non-free works.
I, and others, previously argued that both of them define collections/aggregations very narrowly:
From CC-by-sa-2.0: ""Collective Work" means a such as a periodical
issue, anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form, along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole"
I think the language of this text is very clear about the character of the things which are considered a collection... it's something where multiple wholly independent works and stitched together. Not something where where works have been combined to produce an enhanced work.
But this has come up, and it seemed pretty conclusive to me that people on the cc-lists thought it was okay under SA to create an non-free work out of SA ones.
If thats actually the intent I presume the license text will eventually be changed to allow it, even if it doesn't today.
Perhaps I mistaken in claiming it was the intent, I don't know the intent. I do know that Lessig claimed it was the current operation, and went as far as to claim that the FDL had the same behavior when it was argued that the FDL was better in this regard. That claim defied a common sense reading of the license, and was firmly and unambigously rejected by the FSF.
[snip]
But BY-SA is not generally intended to be weak copyleft. It goes out of its way to say that merely syncing audio and video creates a derivative, with the SA requirement, for example.
It was argued in those threads that the video/audio case is special. I didn't really understand that argument. But I don't really understand the application for a copyleft license which, in the case of images, doesn't encoumber across the number typical method of building new works from images. (i.e. stock photography)
Of course if an article that includes image is considered an adaption of the image, this only serves to highlight the need for some form of FDL/BY-SA compatibility. :)
Absoultely.
Thats also a reason why we encourage people to dual license their works. (And a fairly large number of our contributors do so).