This would hold true if the film is purely a depiction of the photo. I would argue that if it for example was used as a poster in a dorm room (in essence just one of many props in the background) that would hardly make the movie an adaptation of the photo.
Not true.
There are stores for movie producers where you can buy things like fake newspapers to show in your movies, because using actual newspapers violates the copyright and trademark rights of the newspaper publishers. If there's a 'New York Times' visible in a movie, it's because the producer has paid for the right to show it.
Also, I'm really skeptical about the claim that using CC Sharealike content requires you to to license your product under the same license without exception.
The exceptions have been listed - if you can claim 'fair use' (e.g. you merely cite something in a scholarly discussion, or for educational purposes, or for a parody) or if you never re-distribute, you're off the hook. Otherwise not.
So if this CC Sharelike claim is true, that if I use CC-BY-SA content in a production my entire production must be made available under the same license, then any production (any media), any presentation containing data or my own personal work that contains a quote or text from Wikipedia must then be made available under CC for anyone, endowing each person the right to profit from anything in my production/presentation.
Yes - otherwise you void the license, use a copyright protected text without any permission and are open to be sued and can expect damage claims and / or a prohibition to distribute your derived content.
Does this sound like the current state of requirements? Is it just me who thinks this is just not the case?
The law or the license really don't care what you think. It is the provision in the license, if you can't or won't follow the provision and still go ahead you're using a copyright-protected work illegally, end of story.
The point I was daring to make was that there are degrees of use of licensed content
Sorry - you are talking about
someone else's intellectual property here - there's no 'degree' of stealing.
Let's take another bit of property - your socks. Is it okay if I steal your socks? No - it's not. But does it make it okay if I take them and wear them only in a second of movie where they're hardly seen? No, it's still not. Is it okay if I take your socks and never wear them and only make a picture of them? No, it's still not.
Because these are
your socks and I can't simply take them without a permission (license) from you.
(If you don't believe this, go into a major department store, take some article out and then tell the police you only wanted to take a few pictures at home, surely that's okay, see what happens.)
The agreement is - if you want something of the department store, you pay for it. No matter for what purpose you want it.
Same thing here - if you want to use
my intellectual property, you adhere to the license terms I have set down. You don't get to say when you think it's acceptable to not follow my rules - only I get to say that. Pretty much no matter for what purpose you use it.
If you don't like to pay, you don't get to take the socks. And if you don't like a license, you don't get to use the licensed content.
***
I understand that you're not pleased - there's this seemingly wonderful store of free content which is GPL-licensed FG which has stuff you need for your own project, and you'd dearly like to use it. And this is the internet after all, so we're kind of socialized with the assumption that it all kinda belongs to us.
Wrong - using content in your own stuff without respecting ownership and licensing is stealing.
If you're not GPL licensing yourself, FG content is not for you and never will be - all you can do is ask the copyright holders (creators) of some piece of work whether they'd be willing to dual-license - and if only one copyright holder refuses that, there's nothing you can do.
Otherwise, you can use material with attribution licenses, public domain or CC0 for your needs. GPL and Share Alike really require you to do what they say - whether you think this fair or not.