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What's the issue?
The wording of CC BY-SA licenses changed significantly between versions 3.0 and 4.0, but I don't believe Creative Commons (CC) intended to narrow the scope of share alike (I explain why later). When I read the licenses, however, it seems to me that the scope has narrowed, which makes me suspect that my concept of what the scope is for either 3.0 or 4.0 is wrong.

In this question, consider an example where someone uses several illustrations released together under a CC BY-SA license to create a book. The illustrations are completely unaltered; the author simply places an illustration on each page with some separate (but related) text to create the book.

Different scope between 3.0 and 4.0 licenses
Under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license, I believe the author is not required to release the book itself as CC BY-SA (or equivalent), so this is out of the scope of the share-alike clause.
To paraphrase the 4.0 license legal code, for the book to be Adapted Material, the book must be based on the licensed work (which is the case) and modify the licensed material (which has not happened). Only Adapted Material must be shared alike, therefore this is not required to be.
This argument for 4.0 appears to be agreed upon in this question.

Under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license, I believe the author is required to release the book itself as CC BY-SA (or equivalent), so this is within the scope of the share-alike clause.
To paraphrase the 3.0 license legal code, for the book to be an Adaptation, it must be based upon the work (which is the case) and not be a collection (it's not a collection - see below). Adaptations must be shared alike, therefore this is required to be.
A collection must include work in 'its entirety in unmodified form' (which is the case), 'along with one or more other contributions, each constituting separate and independent works in themselves'. The only other contribution is the added text, which is not independent from the images since the images are chosen (or text is written) so that they go well together.

Why the scope shouldn't have narrowed
CC explicitly state here that the scope of share alike hasn't changed, and state more generally that adding a clarification to narrow the scope of adaptations would 'abuse the trust of licensors' (see end of point 2 and point 3 in the ShareAlike intent document).

Yes, the wording of the licenses have changed significantly, for example, in 4.0, there's no explicit mention of collections, but this is presumably due to the specific aim of 4.0 to make the license internationally applicable and easily understood. CC state here, for example, that not explicitly addressing collections 'does not change the scope of the license or the ShareAlike term'.

Have I got the wrong impression of the scope for 3.0 or 4.0, or is it actually that the scope of share alike has narrowed?

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  • This is actually for an even older version (BY-SA 2.0), but there is a case on Wikipedia CC licenses page, under Drauglis v. Kappa Map Group, LLC, which indicates this was already allowed in version 2.0 of the license.
    – Max Xiong
    Commented May 28, 2020 at 17:01

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Section 1.a of the 3.o license code says, in relevant part:

"Adaptation" means a work based upon the Work, ... and includes ... any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted including in any form recognizably derived from the original, ...

(emphasis added)

I believe that the phrase "in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted" means that the book hypothesized in the question would not be an adaptation under the CC-BT-SA license either, (because the original work is not "recast, transformed, or adapted") and would not be subject to the share-alike requirement.

Aside from the collections issue, which was noted in the question, I do not think that the scope of the SA clause in the 4.0 license is not significantly narrower than in the 3.0 clause

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    Okay, so it includes work which is 'recast, transformed, or adapted', but I doubt that means it only includes work which is one of those. I'll admit that the examples after the 'such as' in line 1 of Section 1(a) generally refer to things where the original work has been modified in some way. Surely the bit that's central to the definition, though, is the 'based upon the work' part which you probably could argue about such a book (the rest just fleshes out what that typically looks like)?
    – hodgenovice
    Commented Mar 22, 2019 at 6:24
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    @hodgenovice I bekive that "in which" is a restrictive clause here, and any work in which the original is not 'recast, transformed, or adapted' is not an Adaptation. I have no case law and could be mistaken on that point. I also do not find from your description that it is certain that the book is "based on". the illustrations, but it might be.
    – David Siegel
    Commented Mar 22, 2019 at 6:38
  • I am not up to doing a full review of this question right now, but it is clear – in context – that “any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted” is not restrictive: anything described by this phrase is an “Adaptation”, but other things may be as well.
    – Brian Drake
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 7:54

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