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Recently I've had a dispute with a colleague of mine, about a certain legal situation pertaining to licensing.

Let me try to explain:

Person A has a quiz that they created, with only a pen and piece of paper.

Person B responds to said quiz, and only records THEIR answers to said quiz.

Person B decides to license said response under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Is this legally possible under Massachusetts law? And is this transformative?

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    Person B is just publishing “yes, no, 42, London, 1492, false, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton”? They might be good or poor answers to an entirely different quiz?
    – George White
    Commented Feb 11, 2022 at 1:22
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    @IMSOASIAN See also this Academia SE question. It's not the exact same question, but check it out, as it's simaler.
    – cocomac
    Commented Feb 11, 2022 at 3:32

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Sure

If the answers are substantial enough to constitute an original literary work - short answers or essays for example.

If they are single word or short phrase answers then they are merely the recitation of (possibly incorrect) facts and do not qualify for copyright - you can't licence something you don't own the copyright to.

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You can license answers to a quiz, as long as they are able to be copyrighted.

If the answers are a unique creative work that could be copyrighted, being a part of the quiz makes no difference.

The exception is that a list of facts can not be copyrighted in America. A copyrighted work, may contain facts, but can not only be a listing of facts.

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  • And if it's a multiple-choice quiz, I don't think you could copyright your selection of choices. Perhaps an exception would be if you used the layout of the checkboxes to produce an original visual work, as opposed to the selection of answers themselves.
    – Barmar
    Commented Jun 17 at 15:51

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