FNORD: Under the terms of "Shike"'s Creative Commons license [Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0], one may not use "Shike" for commercial purposes without Mr. Shea's permission. In addition, no derivative works are allowed, which means one may not alter, transform, or build upon "Shike" without Mr. Shea's permission. So, if someone never asked Marc Shea's permission and went ahead and wrote a screenplay and produced a "Shike" film, they would be violating the terms of the book's creative commons license and would therefore be infringing on Mr. Shea's copyright.

The term "noncommercial" and the restriction on derivative works doesn't mean that "Shike" can never be used commercially or be made into a movie. As the creativecommons.org site points out: "The 'NonCommercial' license option means that you do not receive the commercial rights via the Creative Commons license. You can always approach the licensor directly to see if they will separately license you the commercial rights.' The same goes for any derivative works.

See, the CC license in plain English:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
http://creativecommons.org/license/

The Creative Commons licenses are not the same as placing a work into the public domain.

Here's a public domain dedication:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/