Given that this is licensed Creative Commons under Attribution, Non-Commercial, and No Derivative Works, -- and notwithstanding a general desire to respect the authors wishes (http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22922727433/read-share-p...) -- it becomes a question as to whether it is a truly derivative work.
Since the meat-and-potatoes of the work is entirely textual, and faithfully reproduced, you could argue that work is non-derivative and within the license.
CC puts two additional restrictions on “transformation” and “alteration,” but it is not clear on what those would be. It would be reasonable to argue in the spirit of the license, that as long as we do not alter the meaning, intent, or spirit of the original work we did not alter or transform it. Any stricter interpretation would like defeat the purpose of licensing something CC, as any form of distribution requires some, however small, amount of altering (eg, I have to convert it to photons before I can hit your retinas).
There are precedents for what is considered a “derivative work” in the US, but usually as to define “new” works that may desire protection, but not likely as many in this reverse situation where we wish to argue that a slightly altered version is equivalent.
If I made printed-to-PDF from my web browser, is that a derivative work? a transformation? a substantial alteration?
If we take a strict (perhaps stretched) interpretation of Masters desires: you should read it only on my website and share only links to it from there? Then why license it as CC BY-NC-ND? Such interpretation of the license gives you no rights you did not have before under fair use (or fair dealing).
Can you iterate on this a bit more.
Based on this I am actually a bit unsure if blake is not miss-interpreting BY-NC-ND at all.
E.g.
http://mollykleinman.com/2008/10/20/cc-howto-no-derivatives/
interpretes the legal text like this:
"The key words here are “recast, transformed, or adapted.” A derivative work involves enough creativity and originality that it constitutes a new copyrightable work. Simply converting a work from one medium to another — from print to digital, or CD to MP3 — does not produce a derivative work."
Not that it matters - they asked people not to create epubs/pdfs so i removed mine just to respect the wish.
That's a great link. I think it matches my interpretation of the No Derivatives provision.
I think you are very much in the free and clear from the standpoint of the license. The language of the CC license does say that you are free to reproduce it and include it in collections. It even suggests that the media in question is not important: "rights may be exercised in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter devised". There's no point in making reference to "hereafter devised" media if they medium is assume to be fixed at the time of license.
Further, "[the] rights include the right to make such modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and formats" which clearly gives you the right to change mediums as long as we do not violate the clause on adaptations.
The adaptation clause, of course, it up for some interpretation. However, the definition of a derivative work under US Copyright law is likely what was envisioned. If it was not, it would have probably been a huge blunder to call this the "No Derivatives" license. The standard test here seems to be whether the transformation had any significant creative input, and since you conversion was almost purely mechanical, I would argue that it was not significant enough to be considered a derivative.
One thing you did forget to do was to include the CC license itself.
Thanks for noticing. I oversaw it (although i believed to have double checked it)
I will remove the d/l link tomorrow asap i am in front of my laptop again.
