Google lets you upload video -- with strings attached

On Friday afternoon, I uploaded my first video to Google under its new video upload program. The process was pretty similar in some ways to Ourmedia's upload process, with a few exceptions:

- They have curators -- a gatekeeper function -- which isn't too surprising. But that's a competitive advantage Ourmedia will always have over Google video. Here it is three days later, and I still haven't received word one from Google about the status of my video (they haven't "verified" it yet).

- Their taxonomy sucks. I frankly expected better of Google. The video we're seeing on the Net does not fall into Hollywood categories of "drama, comedy," etc. I can be a little bit of a taxonomy snob now, having spent months working through the various metadata schemas that we settled upon for Ourmedia -- to make finding this stuff easier for our users.

- Whlie they ask for less metadata, it's interesting -- and disappointing -- that designating rights is not a part of the upload process. There's no option to assign your media a Creative Commons license, permitting others not only to access your work but to reuse it creatively -- to remix it, borrow from it, quote from it, build upon it.

Because the default for all Google videos is traditional copyright, it is presumably illegal to download a video from Google and share it, or retransmit it to another site, or use it on a commercial site (there are many works on Ourmedia that can be used by commercial entties -- because the owner specifically permitted those uses).

There's also some noise in the blogosphere about what Google may do with your video, given their Terms of Service, which is quite a bit denser (and filled with lawyerese) than Ourmedia's terms of service: You own your own material. Ourmedia claims no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to our service.

At BoingBoing, Jacob Kaplan-Moss writes:

I've taken a look at the Video Uploader terms of service, and they contain some... suspect clauses, including the provision that Google can bill you for excessive bandwidth. Thought you might be interested...

Couple of other differences:

Google video doesn't support Flash. Ourmedia does.

Ourmedia also will freely host audio files, podcasts, images, text documents, software, games and more. Google doesn't.

Overall, though, Google's foray into video is a welcome addition to the cause of spreading the personal media revolution. Now: which of the other search engines will provide free hosting for grassroots media -- and will join an open media registry so those works can be freely shared and accessed?

PVR Blog has more here.