Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (1)

Flickr video is here
April 8, 2008

The buzz about Flickr, the huge photo management and sharing community, initiating a video service has been sounding some time now.  Flickr Video is now here.  We can now pull more of our own media together in one portal.

Flickr's approach to video is different from YouTube's.  Flickr is not looking to host lengthy video or to  repost copyrighted or commercial materials.  As I understand it, the goal is to allow Flickr's pro members (that's a lot of us) to tag and share shorter (90 seconds in length and 150MB) videos alongside with our photographs. 

Videos can be embedded. They can be played directly from thumbnail images as well as from each video's individual Flickr page.  Videos will be viewable by both free and pro users.  They may be labeled, commented upon, tagged, uploaded, and attributed licenses in much the same way as Flickr's photographs.

The site establishes a couple of ground rules:

1. Only “safe” and “moderate” video content is permitted. Your “beautiful wife” should not be moving. (Read more about content filters.)
2. Only upload videos you have created yourself.

Unlike most everything-goes video portals, Flickr encourages use of copyright-friendly content:

If you are interested in adding a soundtrack to your video, there’s lots of great music available through Creative Commons that won't get you in trouble for copyright infringement. 

If you use background music, it’s great form to attribute the music you use by mentioning and linking to the artist, or the CC page you found it on.Here are some online resources you might like to try:
http://ccmixter.org/
http://search.creativecommons.org/

Posted by Joyce Valenza on April 8, 2008 | Comments (1)