Creative Commons CC BY-SA: commercial use question

[Doitsu]

I found an interesting rare book which is available as a non-standard .xml file. It's offered under a CC BY-SA license, and since it's over 100 yeas old it's most likely out of copyright in most countries.
Since the ebook conversion would be rather difficult and time-consuming I'm wondering if I could sell it for a nominal fee.

According to the CC BY-SA license:

You are free:

• to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to Remix — to adapt the work
• to make commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

Share Alike — 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.

Does that mean that I could only sell it as a DRM-free ePub, because any other format would prevent others from "adapting the work?"

[rogue_librarian]

I would definitely think so. If the book is under a CC-SA license you must, well, share alike, and that certainly prohibits any kind of DRM. That said, if it's as old as you say it's probably in the Public Domain anyway, meaning you wouldn't have to rely on the CC license in the first place.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Does that mean that I could only sell it as a DRM-free ePub, because any other format would prevent others from "adapting the work?"

You could certainly use another format besides ePub - that wouldn't prevent others from adapting the work. DRM... using it would certainly violate the intent of the license. You'd probably want to consult a lawyer as to whether it violates the letter of it.