however, refers to the attribution of ideas or data, whereas the CC BY license refers to the creative form.
In biodiversity, the attribution rule is widely accepted. An exception is the case of data or metadata publishing where it is controversial whether a legally binding attribution requirement may be an obstacle to re-use. For example, the Europeana Foundation recently changed their Data Access policy for textual metadata describing multimedia objects published through the Europeana portal from something resembling CC BY-NC to CC0 (Europeana Foundation 2011). Those favoring CC0 or Open Data Licenses see problems with any legal approach to enforce norms of Attribution, Share Alike, or other terms on data or metadata (Science Commons 2011). For example, data aggregation and inheritance may lead to unmanageable attribution and licensing stacks. Furthermore, the borderline between non-copyrightable factual information and copyrightable works (e.g., sufficiently originally creative prose inside a database, or the information model as a whole) is blurred. Conversely, a license requiring attribution greatly increases the willingness of individuals and organizations to release textual data that are research results and should be properly attributed. Without it, large volumes of valuable data may remain unpublished.
Icon of the “Share Alike” (= SA) condition (CC BY, Creative Commons)The “Share Alike” condition (abbreviated “SA”) allows the distribution of derivative works, but requires that all such works must also be shared under the same conditions: “If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.” The effect is that licenses with the SA condition “spread” into derivative works; the biological metaphor of a “viral license” is often used here.
Icon of the “No Derivative Works” (= ND) condition (CC BY, Creative Commons)In contrast to “Share Alike”, a creator may prevent the distribution of derivatives of a work by adding the “No Derivative Works” condition: “You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work” (abbreviated “ND”). This condition does not prevent simple format changes: It is the creative work that is protected, not a particular digital representation. The license clarifies this in “... rights may be exercised in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter devised … include the right to make such modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and formats, but otherwise you have no rights to make Adaptations.” This clarification allows for the creation of lossy conversions (e.g., creating smaller images as needed for small-screen media, or converting a lossless png-image into a lossy jpg-image as needed for mobile media), as long as the new representations remain truthful to the original work. In the case of tiny image thumbnails, the latter may no longer hold and the thumbnail may have to be classified an abridgment or condensation.
The definition of “Adaptation” in the CC license is very far-reaching and the ND condition prevents many desirable uses: Cropping images or videos, adding arrows or lettering, translating into another language, creating time-synched relations between a
