Yahoo! has introduced Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons, a search designed to help find content on the Web that is free to share or build upon. Options are available to limit the scope to content that can be used for commercial purposes, or that can be modified, adapted or built upon.

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.”

Why is this important?

Copyright applies fully and automatically to any work - a photograph, a song, a web page, an article, pretty much any form of expression - the moment it is created. This means that if you want to copy and re-use a creative work you find online, you usually have to ask the author’s permission.

This “all rights reserved” protection is good thing for many authors and artists. But what about those who want you to use their work freely without permission — but on certain conditions?

Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons

UndergroundMedia has given Internet Explorer users one more reason to consider switching to Firefox: podcast search plug-ins!

The free Firefox web browser offers many benefits over Internet Explorer. It’s available on all major platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It’s independent from your operating system, unlike Internet Explorer, which means that browser bugs are much less likely to allow hackers to compromise your system. It also has many features, such as tabbed browsing, RSS support, and extensions, that IE doesn’t offer.

For podcasters that still haven’t made the switch to Firefox, though, UndergroundMedia’s search plugins offer a new temptation.

“Thanks to Jascha Dub over at UndergroundMedia, Podcasting News and Podcast Alley are now right up there with Yahoo, Amazon & eBay,” notes Podcasting News’ Elle Webb. “At least….when it comes to searching in FireFox!”

The plugins are free and easy-to-install.

Installation:

Visit UndergroundMedia.org Firefox plugins page.

Click on the Podcasting News link and a confirmation window will pop up:

This adds a search option for Podcasting News:

A search plugin for Podcast Alley is provided also.

UndergroundMedia.org is an outlet for information to help empower the average person to take an active role in media.