[Foundation-l] An argument for strong copyleft

[Anthony]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 11:56 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at 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.

But there's a simple solution.  Carrie can simply buy a license from
Bill to use the photo in her newspaper article.

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.