[cc-community] for those who want "free only" buttons

Mike Linksvayer ml at creativecommons.org
Wed Feb 14 15:04:27 EST 2007


On Wed, 2007-02-14 at 01:31 -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> <quote who="Mike Linksvayer" date="Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 09:20:11PM -0800">
> > You can always use no anchortext or hide the link with css, but I
> > suspect given how well exploited these are that search engines are smart
> > enough to throw away such links.
> 
> That's a good point. Do you think they would do this categorically (and
> even for doing limited searches for just works under a permissive
> license)?

I don't know.  I wouldn't rely on it working even if it seems to -- it's
just asking for breakage given that any aggregator has to constantly
tune their anti-spam measures.

> > On freedomdefined.org you have two license links in the footer, so it
> > would be easy to change just one of those.
> 
> Yes. I'm less worried about what we do on freedomdefined.org and more
> worried about what we encourage other to do. I don't want to suggest
> that people do anything that it would make it harder to find free works.
> 
> I'm really just trying to understand what search engines for free
> content are actually doing so that I understand what the constraints
> in play are.

I'm not privy to the details of how search engines treat CC notices.
All I can say for certain is that both Google and Yahoo! can deal with
links directly to CC license deeds qualified with rel="license".  My
speculation about spam-fighting methods above is just that.

Regarding what you encourage others to do, it looks like you're
currently providing buttons without any recommended usage.   This is
probably not a good thing as someone could take the button without
linking directly to the CC license deed or e.g.,
http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/CC-BY-SA-2.5 (hmmm, that doesn't
exist), which means one can't tell which license they are actually using
(no version specified, which can be very important).

Whatever use you do recommend should include a link to the relevant CC
license deed.

BTW it is not clear to me whether you consider jurisdiction ports of BY
and BY-SA free -- I do see "national adaptions" at
http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses#The_grid -- but if this is the case
then a) you really need to facilitate people linking to the relevant CC
license deed or create a whole lot of URLs on freedomdefined.org

If I were you I would encourage people to use the standard CC
buttons/link and a free button that could be placed alongside the CC
license button and would link to something like
http://freedomdefined.org/check

The code at that URL would scrape the referrer.  If content at the
referrer includes a link to an approved license, the user gets a page
explaining why the license is free, if not they get warned of a bogus
usage of the free button and encouraged to use a really free license.

-- 
  http://wiki.creativecommons.org/User:Mike_Linksvayer



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