ELI5 - Status of Work adapted from someone else's CC-BY materials?

[Cadence]

So, I thought I understood the creative commons CC-BY license. But after seeing a post by someone else I went to go make sure I was right, but I couldn't find it.... and they seemed so sure of themselves that I now have doubts (possibly aided by being up too late now).

I know from the CC FAQ, that if I use someone else's CC-BY things in a product of mine, I could choose any of the other CC licenses for it as long as they are more restrictive (assuming I gave the required attribution). [see the Adapter’s license chart at Frequently Asked Questions - Creative Commons. ]

Can I also have my new product not be using any CC license at all? Can it be fully copyright protected by me (except that they can go back to the original CC-BY material I used and gave attribution to, and do whatever to it)? [I thought this was true, but now I'm not sure.]

 

[tetrasodium]

So, I thought I understood the creative commons CC-BY license. But after seeing a post by someone else I went to go make sure I was right, but I couldn't find it.... and they seemed so sure of themselves that I now have doubts (possibly aided by being up too late now).

I know from the CC FAQ, that if I use someone else's CC-BY things in a product of mine, I could choose any of the other CC licenses for it as long as they are more restrictive (assuming I gave the required attribution). [see the Adapter’s license chart at Frequently Asked Questions - Creative Commons. ]

Can I also have my new product not be using any CC license at all? Can it be fully copyright protected by me (except that they can go back to the original CC-BY material I used and gave attribution to, and do whatever to it)? [I thought this was true, but now I'm not sure.]

On the bold bit I think only if it was cc0 before. The cc0 exists pretty much as a way to (effectively) thrust something into public domain despite lacking any way of actually doing so. You could use a different license on your stuff but it's pretty trivial to just note the cc license if your already doing it for other parts of your thing. Fate uses a cc license so it might make a good pool of examples to look at

 

[Starglim]

The CC-BY human-readable summary (they call the actual licence the "legal code") explains

You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Once you've done that, you're compliant with the licence. You don't have to licence your work (but if you do, the licence you use can't interfere with others' ability to read the required information, find and reuse the original CC licenced material or similarly "anything the license permits.")

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Can I also have my new product not be using any CC license at all? Can it be fully copyright protected by me (except that they can go back to the original CC-BY material I used and gave attribution to, and do whatever to it)? [I thought this was true, but now I'm not sure.]

Yes. You can. The attribution just has to remain clear and "reasonable". Really the only ambiguous thing is what counts as "reasonable" attribution, since that has to do with what forms of the myriad possible forms of media the CC-BY work and your derivative work take, hence the rule is a vague rule of reasonability.

 

[Cadence]

@tetrasodium @Starglim @Benjamin Olson

So, to clarify...

Say I want to do something with the SRD part that is CC-BY and modify it heavily throughout my own system - but I don't want to share my new creation for some reason (maybe my modifications heavily involve specially licensed IP, for example). Can I simply say that my work uses that CC-BY material (attribution) and provide a link to the CC-BY-SRD for those who want to know what I'm not claiming?

As a follow-up, does one need to attribute use of one's own CC-BY material to oneself in a product that uses it?

 

[Cadence]

A follow up question is about training AI (writing? picture?) on CC-BY material. Is it "adequate attribution" to just have an e-file with all of the CC-BY materials the AI was trained on? That feels baddish to me on a first pass, but does it technically do it?

 

[tetrasodium]

@tetrasodium @Starglim @Benjamin Olson

So, to clarify...

Say I want to do something with the SRD part that is CC-BY and modify it heavily throughout my own system - but I don't want to share my new creation for some reason (maybe my modifications heavily involve specially licensed IP, for example). Can I simply say that my work uses that CC-BY material (attribution) and provide a link to the CC-BY-SRD for those who want to know what I'm not claiming?

As a follow-up, does one need to attribute use of one's own CC-BY material to oneself in a product that uses it?

I think you might be getting firmly into IANAL/IANYL territory if you are talking about wotc's CC4-BY stuff because they've already proven themselves willing to say one thing & do something else as they did with their own advice on the OGL up till a couple months ago. For other CC licenses yea most of them are intended to allow things like that & you can see an example of one attributing fate then posting the OGL in the mindjammer preview. I picked that because it was the first fate thing I own that had more than one license listed but wotc seems to be going in a very different direction than evilhat is on licensing .

 

[Greggy C]

@tetrasodium @Starglim @Benjamin Olson

So, to clarify...

Say I want to do something with the SRD part that is CC-BY and modify it heavily throughout my own system - but I don't want to share my new creation for some reason (maybe my modifications heavily involve specially licensed IP, for example). Can I simply say that my work uses that CC-BY material (attribution) and provide a link to the CC-BY-SRD for those who want to know what I'm not claiming?

The specifics of how to attribute are defined here:

Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0

CC-BY is the most permissive license, you can create a commercial work based on it, and you don't have to make your work shared.

 

[Greggy C]

As a follow-up, does one need to attribute use of one's own CC-BY material to oneself in a product that uses it?

Thats a vague question, you need more specifics on whether you are trying to share the final product.

 

[MoonSong]

The specifics of how to attribute are defined here:

Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0

CC-BY is the most permissive license, you can create a commercial work based on it, and you don't have to make your work shared.

Could the new work be released as C0?

 

[tetrasodium]

Could the new work be released as C0?

Your portion but not the CC-BY portion. This might be useful for some examples of more and less restrictive licenses

About CC Licenses - Creative Commons

Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the...

creativecommons.org

 

[Cadence]

Thats a vague question, you need more specifics on whether you are trying to share the final product.

If WotC uses the SRD for making 5.5e PHB, and a huge part of the SRD is CC-BY, does WotC itself need to give the attribution in the 5.5e PHB?

 

[Cadence]

CC-BY is the most permissive license, you can create a commercial work based on it, and you don't have to make your work shared.

That last part was the part I wanted clarification on - I couldn't find anything that just came out and said it. (I wish the table in the FAQ had a column for "No Permissions" as well). One of the posters in another thread is under the impression that CC-BY works like one of the share ones.

 

[Jer]

If WotC uses the SRD for making 5.5e PHB, and a huge part of the SRD is CC-BY, does WotC itself need to give the attribution in the 5.5e PHB?

I don't think that's how it works, since even under a CC-BY Wizards is still the holder of the copyright and so can use it however they want and also license it to other people under different terms if they choose to.

It's just that a CC-BY license is open and irrevocable so they can't take it back. Or at least irrevocable according to 2023 legal terminology. 23 years ago the OGL was written to be irrevocable too, and now we're being told the magic words that worked then don't work so good anymore, so who knows what 2046 legalese will look like.