Tracy Poff writes:

It is the position of Creative Commons, as I understand it, that if I use a work which is licensed to me under the CC-BY license, I can then license my derivative work to others under CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-NC, GFDL, or any other license I choose that will preserve attribution of the author of the original work--or, indeed, I can choose not to grant any license at all to my work when distributing it. It seems to me that you are thinking of the sharealike licenses.

See also Question 2.15 of http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions

I think this is a great point, but the question here is what "use" means. If it means simple duplication, then I don't see any huge problem with Knol-to-Wikipedia transportation, although Wikipedia-to- Knol transportation may remain problematic.

Keep in mind that mere duplication is not normally judged to be a derivative work, and mere duplication is what started this thread.

But I think you have put your finger on the problem. Everyone agrees that free culture means free knowledge. Not everyone agrees that free culture means free expression (i.e., the ability of a subsequent user to use freely licensed content without any restriction.).

Speaking conservatively, I am not inclined to interpret CC-BY as authorizing mere duplication of an article that is then represented by a declaration that the content is available under a GFDL or CC-BY-SA license.

And, of course, the CC-BY option is, for various reasons, not likely to be the dominant license of Knol.

--Mike