Is something including an unmodified work considered a derivative work?

Question

Let's say I want to publish a book which contains an extract of a Wikipedia article. I don't want to modify the extract in any way, I just want to copy it into my book.

Wikipedia text seems to be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. It is very clear that I need to provide credit to Wikipedia's authors, which is no problem. It is also clear that any derivative work needs to be distributed under a compatible license. So if I would make any alterations to the extract, I would need to publish this new version under such a license.

Now I wonder if my whole book would be considered a derivative work. And if so, would this mean that I need to publish my whole book under a compatible license?

Answer 1

You cannot create derivative works without permission of the copyright holder (even if you create it and keep it to yourself). Further, you cannot distribute derivative works without permission of the copyright holder. That's a general principle that always applies.

Since there is a license, you need to read that license carefully and determine under which conditions you have permission to create derivative works, and to distribute them.

Your book would be considered a derivative work. In some situations, like commenting on a work, parody and some others, you would have a defense if you are quoting tiny parts of the work. But generally, if you find it unfair that your 200 page needs to be licensed because you used two pages from an open source source, you either do without those two pages, or you find the author and ask for permission under a different license.

Note that facts are not copyrightable. So if the wikipedia page contains facts and isn't just made up, you can read it ten times, memorise all the facts, and maybe tell the facts to someone who you pay to write a similar article.