Yahoo Launches Search Engine for Creative Commons Content
Podcasting News points to a new beta search engine from Yahoo for Creative Commons content (basically stuff that is not copyrighted see the update below).

The search engine helps you quickly find those authors and the work they have marked as free to use with only "some rights reserved." If you respect the rights they have reserved, then you can use the work without having to contact them and ask. In some cases, you may even find work in the public domain -- that is, free for any use with "no rights reserved."

One slight issue. Many of the sites listed carry content that they have "borrowed" from other sources. For example, a lot of Search Engine Lowdown content appears on these sites.

While I don't have a problem with my content being shared, I don't have an explicit creative commons license available either. Could Yahoo inadvertantly send you to a site - that you think you can license content from - only to find that the site has content mined from a copyrighted source?

Update: So as you may have noticed this site is not called "Creative Commons Lowdown" and hence we don't pretend to be experts on CC. However, one of our readers is and we thought we'd share his rant with you...

"... basically stuff that is not copyrighted."

I will thank you to stop spreading FUD like this. Creative Content is indeed copyright and this comment of yours does great damage to the movement -- unless you're being bankrolled by Hollywood, and even if you are, I recommend you read Lessig's excellent Free Culture to gain an understanding of how Copyright works, what it means, and especially how those spreading the anti-CC FUD do so to dupe the consumer for their own profit.

Since you're likely not likely to read that reference, let me summarize: Copyright Licensing is not about restricting rights, it is about granting rights; in the absense of any statement (such as your own site), maximum restrictions apply and the Creative Commons licenses provide us with an explicit means to grant a sane set of allowances suitable for the information sharing that is common practice in a digital networked world.

And thank you for the heads up on your own ad-hoc rule for sharing -- I'll delete your link from our aggregator, so save us any surprises should you have a change in your social weather.

mrG

Clearly there is a sense among CC advocates of being royally screwed by the establishment. I didn't even know it qualified as a "movement".

Anyway, mcG, I don't think you get my point. Bloggers are an important vehicle for the distribution of CC content. Many bloggers, myself included, freely share our content and the blogosphere thrives by sharing each others thoughts. However, what if a blogger, who has a CC license on their web site, publishes copyrighted information, obtained from a source that does not have a CC license. That blogger could get themselves and Yahoo in a lot of trouble. Make sense? It does in my world. ;-)
Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |