[Foundation-l] What's wrong with CC-BY-SA?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Dec 1, 2007 6:43 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
>
> In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions
> unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image.  Anything
> less, is little better than CC-BY.  Most people that use photographs do so
> for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of making
> derivative images.  Hence copyleft provisions that apply only derivative
> images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak and of
> little impact.

I could not have said this better myself. Exactly.  Because of the way
still illustrations are typically used and reused, a copyleft license
which does not extent to all derivatives in fairly broad sense (i.e. a
derivative is a work which contains the covered work) might as well
not be copyleft at all.

And since the cc-by attribution clause is soft (allowing service
providers to take attribution), I'd argue that if you're going to do
cc-by you might as well do 'PD'. Basic kindness and respect still
demands attribution for PD works, and since most people can't afford
to go to court every day it is basic kindness and respect that is
getting them attribution under cc-by in most cases anyways.