On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 9:00 AM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Anthony
<wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 11:56 PM, Pharos
<pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't want someone to modify it and put a
non-free copyright on the
derivative of my photograph.
But I don't believe in purity tests either, that seek to dictate the
copyright status of work I had no hand in, and whose only connection
to my photograph is that they might appear on the same page.
Work that you had no hand in cannot be a derivative of your work, so
there's really no question about that. However, if your photograph
appears in a newspaper article, then you *did* have a hand in that
newspaper article.
Maybe this is a matter of semantics, but if I look at a newspaper I'd
say it generally consists of articles which have pictures in them. I
wouldn't say that it has articles and pictures which just happen to
appear on the same page.
Let me expand on that. Say Andrew creates an article, Bill creates a
photo, and Carrie puts the two together into a newspaper article.
Andrew sells the article to Carrie under a restrictive license. Bill
releases his photo under a free, strong copyleft, license.
We have two independent works, an article and a photo, and we have a
newspaper article which is, at least in my opinion, a derivative of
both works. Now I agree that it's unrealistic to expect Andrew to
give away his copyright. He probably makes a living writing newspaper
articles. On the other hand, most Bill's would find it unfair that
Carrie gets to profit of his work without giving anything in return.
This is the reason the Noncommercial-only license (which I dislike) is
so popular.
I like Carrie profiting. Good for Carrie! What I don't want is
Carrie not using my photo, because he is forced to put totally
unrealistic restrictions on Andrew.
But there's a simple solution. Carrie can simply
buy a license from
Bill to use the photo in her newspaper article.
I'm not interested in selling my works. I'm interested in giving them away!
I actually want to encourage re-use, and some publisher having to
track me down and make me a special deal is not something that I would
consider part of the free culture process.
For those Bill's who don't mind Carrie's
using their work in this way,
there's always CC-BY or some other non-copylefted free license.
I want to protect the "freeness" of actual derivatives of my work,
which is why I dislike CC-BY. What I don't want is a purity test for
something that I and most people would not consider a derivative work,
but merely using two works on the same page.
Thanks,
Pharos