I think the additional question of whether or not something is a derivative work is the key question, and Thorsten ignores that problem. If he had a good reason for why I was wrong in what I said before he would have refuted it rather than ignored it.
Right, the only reason that I don't answer to each and every argument in a page-long discussion is that I have no good answer...
I actually cited a text from the CC page that defines when something is a derivative work (called 'adaption' there) and commented on it before - how did you miss that?
So the reason I didn't answer is that I already had
It's not very nice of you to imply the above.
Stealing isn't very nice in the first place - I don't have any particular reason to be nice to people who do it.
And whoever in this conversation wants to wear that particular shoe can wear it - as I've been informed, we've been conducting a purely hypothetical debate.
And so if it can be legally determined that the "use" of something is so "little" that it isn't "derivative" then it is what it is, regardless of how you feel about that. You might feel that it's still stealing, but it isn't (in such a hypothetical case).
I think I was the first to bring up the 'fair use' example here, so I don't see how citing it back to me helps me understanding anything
But each licensor, as you've said yourself, decides the conditions of the license. Wikipedia can set its own of conditions. I guess this doesn't make it a pure CC BY-SA license?
No, if it says it's a CC-BY-SA license, that's what it is. If I say GPL, that's what it is. I can add my human-readable explanation as I'm trying to do here, and Wikipedia can add a human readable version anywhere, but that has no legal relevance whatsoever - only the actual (rather lengthy) text in legal jargon of the licenses is what counts in the end.
If I never say 'GPL', then I can draw my own license text - that's different.
just made the argument to the effect that if someone has 15 years worth of proprietary research, and they're forced to give up that information publicly for everyone just because (either wittingly or unwittingly) they included a photo on a slide presentation taken by you on your smartphone of your backyard seems to me, speaking as a human being, not a robot, disproportionate and unfair.
then you have an argument and a case to make that the presenter using your photo be forced to release all their content to the public.
As we've said a few times, that's a very unlikely outcome requiring a court decision.
If you want to be legal up-front, you have the choice of not including licensed material in your proprietary work up-front. If you absolutely want that material, you have the option to contact the owner and ask for dual licensing.
Only if you can't get dual licensing and still absolutely want the material, you have to follow the license and give up 'proprietary'.
If you do not, you're violating copyright.
The far more likely consequences of that might be damages to pay or a takedown order .
1. Purpose and character of the use
2. Nature of the copyrighted work
3. Amount and substantiality (I guess this is what you'd describe as stealing your work a little bit).
4. Effect upon work's value
And that's what a court decision will weigh.
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As for 'stealing a little'.
If I license something, the license needs to be followed. The arguments made here frequently involved 'What if a really large project uses something really small?' - does that void the license terms (we've had the photograph in the presentation or the movie).
No, it does not void the license terms - it's still stealing.
Because large projects by continuing the argument could take any number of small things, bringing always the argument that it's 'just a small bit of the whole'.
I am making movies - and we painstakingly vet every half-second sound clip for license compliance - and we attribute a half-second sound in the end credits of a 45 minute production if that is required. We absolutely stay away from share-alike and no commercial licenses because we do sell the product (not to make a profit but to recover some of the investments in costumes and equipment).
Not following the license terms, even for a half-second sound clip, is a copyright violation. That is black and white. The degree of compensation required when this goes to court is usually proportional to factors such as
1) how much profit did the copyright violator make
2) how much of the whole is the copyright-violating material
It's the same as you're not usually punished the same way for stealing some chewing gum and for stealing half a million bucks. So that is the grey area.
(And yes, forcing a whole movie into a Share-Alike license for including a short sound clip would be a disproportionate punishment in my view as well - a proportional response would be an order to remove the material and a minor compensation - perhaps according to the current market value of a commercially available sound of the same length. However - that does not change my view that the movie crew should never deliberately ignore a license in the first place.).