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The quest for new search features continues with the latest news that Yahoo! has launched a beta version of a tool that's designed to search the Web for information that can be shared, edited, and reused. Yahoo! dubs the tool the Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons. It's a useful tool for those who dabble with online content.

Creative Commons is a non-profit group that provides copyrights for creative work. The group offers a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright. Yahoo!'s Creative Commons tool essentially limits Web searches to content published by authors who encourage consumers to share or reuse their content under specified conditions. The content can come from books, poems, reports, lyrics, photos, and other creative works. The tool will search the Web for such content and in most cases, return content with a complete copyright. The copyright can be applied to nearly any form of creative content.

Copyrights for content found online usually involve getting the author's permission for copying or reusing. The Creative Commons license offers a more flexible copyright. Yahoo! says it will clearly specify content licensed through Creative Commons so that users don't have to contact the author for rights.

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