New version of Vimeo allows searching by Creative Commons license
A Vimeo redesign unveiled in late January for the first time allows users of the popular video hosting site to search for Creative Commons-licensed films. So far, the new design is available only to logged-in users on an opt-in basis. A “filters” box becomes visible on the upper right after one performs an initial search. A drop-down menu within the box allows one to filter the search results by each type of Creative Commons license — Attribution, Attribution-ShareAlike, etc. — but not all of them at once, or all of the ones that are free to modify (i.e. excluding those with “no derivatives” provisions). So it’s pretty basic yet, but better than nothing.
This is significant for videopoem/filmpoem makers looking for high-quality footage for a quick web project. For anything more elaborate, one would still probably want to do a general search, including traditionally copyrighted videos, and plan on asking permission. If using Creative Commons-licensed work, filmmakers should of course abide by the terms of the license, which at minimum means including the attribution in the film’s credits, and may also mean including the terms of the license and even licensing one’s own remix the same way (in the case of a “Share Alike” license), unless one gets specific permission from the copyright holder to waive those requirements. Please see my page of web resources for videopoem makers for links to more information on using Creative Commons-licensed material (as well as other sources of free-to-use video and the like).
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Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.
