[Foundation-l] [cc-licenses] [Commons-l] Requirements for a strong copyleft license

[Delirium]

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> (There can be edge cases, of course, but they are a bit difficult to 
> construct.)

They're not that difficult to construct, though. One example that 
Gregory pointed out is an illustrated textbook or how-to manual. A loose 
interpretation whereby a copyleft image can be used in a non-copyleft 
work would allow a textbook publisher to lift all the illustrations from 
this free-content textbook for their own proprietary textbook without 
having to release anything back.

Of course in that case, the tie-in between the text and the 
illustrations might be sufficiently tight that a court would rule it a 
derivative work anyway, regardless of what the Creative Commons 
organization says about the matter. In my view it makes a big difference 
how closely integrated the text and images are---a newspaper article 
about John Doe that just happens to have an image of John Doe 
accompanying it is quite different from an illustrated instruction manual.

-Mark