|
home · articles · web search & cc licenses |
A key change at iCommons
If you're not part of the iCommons mailing list, take a look at the letter that Heather Ford, Executive Director of iCommons, sent to the list yesterday:
Dear friends,
At the 2 August iCommons Board Meeting, the board decided to make some difficult but necessary changes at iCommons. It has become clear over the past months that our vision for iCommons is different from the... more
|
| |
Web Search & CC Licenses
Francis Deblauwe · Saratoga, CA (United States) · Jun 09th, 2008 4:27 pm · 28 votes · 1 comment
|
| |
| The Google sign inside the expo hall at SES Chicago, December 2006, by Matt McGee |
 |
How many web search engines actually allow to filter for Creative Commons-licensed materials? How many websites allow you to search for CC-licensed images only? How about videos and audio materials? I did a quick survey of a number of (English-language) websites.
CC licenses and their accompanying symbols basically announce that a text/image/video/audio material is in the public domain, with some variations. The major, well-known sites that allow CC filtering are Yahoo! and the photo sharing site Flickr. Google basically offers the same convenience but uses plainer wording such as "free to use or share." A few websites use Google’s or Yahoo!’s search technology and rights filtering, e.g., AOL, Go.com. Blip.tv and SpinXpress offer CC filtering for videos and images. Surprisingly, the Internet Archive does not provide CC-licensing as a criterion in searches. After some digging, I found that they offer a cumbersome workaround though.
Further down the line, I quickly ran into some issues. Many search websites are fly-by-night operations: here today, gone tomorrow. Many are not really serious in that they have licensed someone else’s search technology and only add a commercial, money-making overlay. Then, some websites use the term "royalty-free" which sounds like "free to use," no payment required, right? Wrong. It usually means that there are no restrictions on how or where exactly you use the pictures, but you still have to pay a licensing fee. This stands in contrast to "rights-managed" images whereby the copyright holder imposes certain conditions, e.g., how long they will be published, in what type of publication, in what country, etc. However, the term "royalty-free" is occasionally used to denote pictures that are free to use after all, e.g., by NationalGeographicStock.com. This is very confusing and one more reason why the CC licensing scheme ought to become the standard.
All in all, adoption of CC filtering on search websites is far from widespread. We still have a lot of work to do! In the meantime, the Creative Commons website offers a good search feature that leverages the best of the search site breed.
Appendix: Comparative table
tags: united states policy-law local-context-global-commons search-engines creative-commons licensing
|
|
|
| |
add a comment: you must be logged on in order to comment. please log in or register at iCommons.org and and your comments right after.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
send
printer-friendly version
invite to vote
add a comment
