Re: Can CC BY 2.0 be upgraded to 3.0 ?
Bas Wijnen <wijnen@debian.org> writes:
> On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 03:31:19PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> The key phrase is "original," not "work." Original work generally
>> means, in US copyright law, that there is some creative component or
>> content that makes it copyrightable. It's the same phrase used to
>> determine whether something is copyrightable in the first place.
> Sure, but if you have a program, then that is an original work.
> Slamming a new license on it creates a new original work (there is still
> creative content in it), which is based on the original "original work".
I believe that this is not true based on my reading of that section of the
US code because the derivative is not original. In other words, this does
not create a *new* original work -- it's simply the same original work,
and therefore does not meet the legal definition of derivative. A
derivative work has to be, itself, an original work of authorship, at
least as I read that section of the code.
However, I'm not a lawyer, and certainly the only way to settle the
question would be to get an opinion from a legal expert.
> You didn't quote anything that said the derivation must itself be an
> original work. In fact, the statement that only one original work is
> required for making a derivative means that it doesn't need to be, as
> far as I can see.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this. But I'm just a random
Debian developer, particularly on this topic; I have no legal expertise
and my opinion doesn't matter any more than anyone else's. (In
particular, this is neither a technical nor a policy question, so any
other administrative hats I wear in Debian are not relevant to this.) I
was just curious since the original statement seemed wrong to me, and now
I've been convinced to personally concur with Paul.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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