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Yahoo Adds Search for Creative Commons Content
BlakeCaldwell writes "Yahoo has added the ability to search specifically for content with unconventional copyright arrangements. The search tool was produced in order to help promote Creative Commons' efforts to advocate the use of nontraditional copyright arrangements between digital content developers and people interested in licensing those individuals' work. The group said that most of the content available through the Yahoo search can be licensed for free under required attribution or noncommercial usage guidelines." Commentary on Lawrence Lessig's Blog.
I tried a few different searches on a range of topics and on pretty much every page there was no notice of non-traditional license and most had a copyright notice at the bottom.
Microsoft announced today that they are adding a new feature to MSN search, which allows you to restrict the search results to information and works with severe license restrictions. A Microsoft spokesman said, "We believe that when you look at Total Cost of Ownership, you will find that our heavily restricted content provides a better value than works that are in the public domain. After all, Moby Dick is only free if your time is worth nothing." A followup statement attributed the confusing nature of the previous statement to the spokesman's overly tight necktie.
Unknown host pong.
Another Wikipedian, a developer with Yahoo India, mentioned this on the Wikipedia village pump last night. Being that I handle the full-length music uploads almost single-handedly (you can see my progress here) I went and eagerly tried it out. The result was very disappointing. I searched for about 20 different songs on my wishlist (at the bottom of my user page. Most of the hits were mutopia MIDIs or bizticket e-donkey links --- eg, useless. So I search for the songs + (Ogg OR mp3). The only useful hits were to the Internet Archive and to the MIT free music site, both of which I have thoroughly plundered. So like I said, this was a sizeable letdown.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
After doing a few searches, I'm really confused by the results coming up - some are posted on news sites, and other places where my first assumption is definitely not that I can just take the image and go on my way with no worries. Are we just supposed to trust that the search engine *actually* found media we can safely use? Because somehow I don't think that my college will be too happy with me if I try to use that as an excuse when I'm being accused of stealing someone else's intellectual property.
It still seems that making sure the image is really free for use has to be the responsibility of the person doing the search, and it looks like in some cases this is going to require at least a little bit of extra searching.
Still a cool idea, and I hope they continue to improve on it.