Google's advanced search page now lets users filter results by the re-use rights allowed by Creative Commons licenses. There are three new options: Return results that
"aren't filtered by license" (the default)
"allow some forms of re-use"
"can be freely modified, adapted, or built upon"
Mia Garlick's posting on the Creative Commons blog includes this comment from Lawrence Lessig: "Creative Commons is thrilled by Google’s decision to join Yahoo! in enabling the spread of CC-licensed content. Now two major search engines recognize Creative Commons licenses; this confirms that CC is an important part of the infrastructure of the Internet."
(PS: I repeat my comment from March 2005, when Yahoo first offered CC-filtered searching: "All search engines can offer this service and undoubtedly more and more of them will. As copyright locks down more content more tightly, searchers will want re-use rights almost as much as relevance. Search engines that find both will have an advantage. Conversely, authors and publishers who consent to grant more reuse rights than fair-use alone already provides should make their consent machine-readable for the next generation of search engines.")
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/05/2005 09:22:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
