Re: CC license on figures in specs?

On 2011/12/16 1:37, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
> Ian Jacobs writes:
>
>> On 15 Dec 2011, at 10:27 AM, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
>>
>>> Anybody ever put e.g. a CC 3.0 Sharealike with citation license on one
>>> or more figures in a W3C Rec.?  Any reason not to?
>>
>> I believe that would conflict with the Document License.
>
> Well, obviously I wondered about that, and, equally obviously, IANAL,
> but I thought that a single figure was likely to be reusable under
> fair-use _anyway_, so we might as well ask for credit, and it's a way
> to acknowledge a contribution from the 'artist'. . .

IANAL here too, and rules and practice may well differ quite a bit among 
countries. But from what I have observed in actual practice (e.g. how 
reuse of figures is handled in the academic world), there is quite a bit 
of a difference between text and figures.

There seems to be a lot of leeway for how much *text* you can cite 
within "fair use" (or whatever equivalent in other jurisdictions). On 
the other hand, there seems to be much less leeway for figures.

Some of the difference may be attributed to tradition. But to some 
extent, the difference is due to the fact that we seem to assume more 
artistic content (expression) in a figure than in text, and figures come 
much more in fixed, integral units than text (where you can cite from a 
few words to a clause to a sentence to a paragraph and up).

Regards,    Martin.

Received on Friday, 16 December 2011 07:39:51 UTC