If your reuse of a CC-licensed work does not create an adaptation, then
- you are not required to apply a ShareAlike-license to your overall work if you are using an SA-licensed work within it;
- the ND restriction does not prevent you from using an ND-licensed work; and
- you can combine that CC-licensed material with other work as long as you attribute and comply with the NonCommercial restriction if it applies.
If your reuse of a CC-licensed work does create an adaptation, then there are limits on whether and how you may share the adapted work. We will look at those next. But first, a note about collections of materials.
ADAPTATIONS AND REMIXES VS. COLLECTIONS
Introductory note: The distinction between adaptations and collections is one of the trickiest concepts in copyright law. While there are many situations in which the differences are clear, there are also several ambiguous scenarios. The distinction between adaptations and remixes is even less clear; it varies by jurisdiction, and even within a given jurisdiction, a judge’s determination between the two can be subjective, since there are few definitive rules on which to rely.
In contrast to an adaptation or remix, a collection involves the assembly of separate and independent creative works into a collective whole. A collection is not an adaptation. One community member likened the difference between adaptations and collections to smoothies and TV dinners, respectively:
- Like a smoothie (figure 4.9), an adaptation or remix mixes material from different sources to create a wholly new work.
- In an adaptation or remix (and a smoothie), you often cannot tell where one constituent work ends and another one begins. While this flexibility is useful for the new creator, it is still important to provide attribution to the individual parts that went into making the adaptation.
- An example of an educational adaptation would be an open textbook chapter that weaves together multiple OER in such a way that the reader can’t tell which resource was used on which page. That said, the endnotes of the book chapter should still provide attribution to all of the sources that were remixed in the chapter.
