Webware

In an effort to keep people from incorrectly reusing or repurposing images found on its image search tool, Google has added new options that let users filter results by usage rights. Users can now filter photos by whether they're available for reuse, commercial reuse, reuse with modification, or commercial use with modification.

Google is including a variety of licensing methods including Creative Commons, GNU Free Documentation license, and items that are in the public domain. Its system for determining the rights on various shots is not foolproof though, and as such the company is recommending that those who are interested in republishing or reworking any of the images check with the content owner first (if possible).

Users can now choose one of four license filters for images on Google image search.

(Credit: CNET)

What's likely to be a long-term effect of supporting license filtering is that Google's image index becomes far larger than it is right now. Some content owners who have chosen to block its indexing to keep others from easily reusing their photos may think twice; with these new filters there's at least some semblance of care and control, even if Google is basing that off information from a photo's metadata.

It's also a signal that Google is paying more attention to the rights of user content, although the filtering is still something that's tucked away in the advanced settings of the search tool, and not something users have to check off before even beginning a new search.

Google has not yet rolled out license filtering to any of its other properties. Sites like Google Books and Video could be next. In the meantime, there are several search tools that let users quickly seek out images that can be reused and remixed including the Creative Commons search engine, Flickr, Blip.tv, ArtistServer, The Internet Archive, Wikihow, and Wikipedia.

Getty Images' Flickr collection is now live.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Getty Images, one of the stock photography powerhouses, has switched on a program by which selected Flickr photographers can license their images to paying customers.

In earlier days of the microstock business, in which photographers license images over the Internet for relatively low prices through sites including Getty's iStockphoto, there was speculation Flickr might jump into the market. After all, there's plenty of good material, and it's often already tagged for easier categorization.

Instead, though, Flickr and Getty announced a partnership in which Getty taps Flickr photographers it believes have potential to sell their photos through Getty. Invitations started going out in January, and now the Getty's Flickr collection is live, Yahoo announced on its blog Tuesday.

One complication, though: many photographers at Flickr offer their images under Creative Commons licenses that permit copying and redistribution of the photos.

According to the Flickr help section on the Getty program, Yahoo switches Creative Commons-licensed photos to all rights reserved if they're submitted to Getty:

Can I sell my Creative Commons-licensed content?

There is a chance one of your Creative Commons-licensed photos may catch the eye of a perceptive Getty Images editor. You are welcome to upload these photos into the Flickr collection on Getty Images, but you are contractually obliged to reserve all rights to sale for your work sold via Getty Images. If you proceed with your submission, switching your license to All Rights Reserved (on Flickr) will happen automatically.

If you're not cool with that, that's totally cool. It just means that particular photo will need to stay out of the Flickr collection on Getty Images.

Ben Metcalfe launched a discussion of the Creative Commons issue, pointing out that Creative Commons licenses are perpetual.

In response, a Getty Images representative said, "We would never expect anyone to revoke a license. We know that your image is being used with your permission by those who licensed it through CC (Creative Commons), which is why we are placing CC images we choose in RF (royalty-free licensing) only. We couldn't place it in RM (rights-managed) because rights management would not be possible. We came to this so as not to exclude inviting CC images."

Today on the Real Deal podcast, Tom and I interviewed Colette Vogele, attorney, Fellow at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, and host of the Rules for the Revolution podcast. We started to cover the concept of copyright from the perspective of the content producer separately from that of the consumer, but found that the line between the two is increasingly fuzzy. We all consume content. But with digital technologies, almost every one of us also produces, copies, or otherwise mangles the content that we are consuming.

We talked with Vogele about this, and went over not just the legal doctrine that applies to digital content, but also some of the practical guidelines in dealing with infringement of rights (near the end). Play the podcast for this free lesson in modern copyright law.

If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums.

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The nonpartisan alliance that formed this spring to advocate the open use of presidential-debate footage isn't very happy about Fox News' cease-and-desist letter to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign over a McCain ad that used footage from a Fox-sponsored debate.

On Thursday, the nameless group announced that it has called on Fox to rescind the letter, as well as related missives to other Republican presidential candidates.

The McCain camp, meanwhile, has continued to air the ads, claiming that using 19 seconds of a 90-minute debate constitutes fair use.

"John McCain deserves praise for taking on Fox and opposing corporations (that) want to be gatekeepers of political speech," MoveOn.org representative Adam Green said in a statement that had been issued by the online leftist hub on behalf of the group.

The left-right alliance is helmed by Stanford law professor and copyright reform advocate Larry Lessig, and it counts a host of new-media luminaries among its ranks: Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, Craigslist's Craig Newmark, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, MoveOn founder Eli Pariser, and Redstate co-founders Mike Krempasky and Erick Erickson. In April, shortly after forming, the group issued letters to the Democratic and Republican national headquarters, "calling for presidentia- debate video to be liberated--so that footage could be freely excerpted, shared, blogged, and YouTubed," according to a statement.

Eventually, CNN, ABC, and NBC/MSNBC responded to the initiative, announcing varying degrees of "openness" for debate footage. Fox News and other Fox broadcasting stations have not participated, and some right-leaning members of the open-debate alliance have indicated that they may encourage Republicans to follow the Democrats' lead in shunning the News Corp. division.

"Already, Fox is viewed as a partisan network by the Democrats, who will not use that forum for debates," said Redstate's Erickson. "It would be a shame if the Republicans now shut out Fox altogether from the debate process. Every other news organization has liberated their debate footage, and Fox should either be no different or no longer have the privilege of airing debates."

Fox has not yet responded to the organization's criticism.

Owl Music Search is a cool tool that was spotlighted at a Creative Commons Salon last night. The potentially endangered Pandora and Last.fm recommend which music you'll like by matching text descriptions of albums, artists and songs. But Owl analyzes the actual waveforms of music files and matches them to similar tunes, many of which have Creative Commons licenses.

When I uploaded Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," Owl dug up 44 tracks by Loretta Lynn, Outkast, the Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson and others, highlighting snippets of their songs that resembled parts of "Hallelujah." Owl has the capability to let you select segments of a song and search for that clip elsewhere. In theory, this would let you find, say, which rappers have sampled "Chocolate City" among a gajillion other Parliament jams.

Owl looks promising but is still hatching from its version .3 shell. Its tagline "finding music through music" describes the novelty but also the limitation to its random search feature. While Owl let me narrow down music by year and genre, I found no text search field on its site. Instead, you can search words and phrases within Owl either via Creative Commons or a Firefox plugin. Mac users can also install a plugin to scour Owl via iTunes.

Owl taps into songs from ccMixter (more here), Jamendo, and Magnatune and other sites. Partnerships with IRIS Distribution and CDBaby are in progress.

Owl Music search matches songs with similar waveforms.