The Open Video Conference looks like an interesting couple of days for anyone interested in online video and the future of open and participatory culture on the web. From their description:

Open Video is more than just open codecs. It’s the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online. The conference will showcase awesome cultural works, inspiring talks, and cool tech demos.

They have some great speakers like Clay Shirkey and Yochai Benkler and topics span a huge and fascinating spectrum: fair use, human rights and video, mobile journalism, art and technology and giving away films for free (Jamie King will be speaking about Steal This Film II, Brett Gaylor about Rip: A Remix Manifesto). I plan to be there and will report back. There will also be a live webcast.

Find out more about the Open Video Alliance and the ideas behind the Conference in the video below.

The good people at the Center for Social Media have published a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. Here’s what they say about it:

This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances.

This is a guide to current acceptable practices, drawing on the actual activities of creators, as discussed among other places in the study Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video and backed by the judgment of a national panel of experts. It also draws, by way of analogy, upon the professional judgment and experience of documentary filmmakers, whose own code of best practices has been recognized throughout the film and television businesses.

Listen to these clips from the Adventures in Online Distribution panel from The Media Conference held by Britdoc earlier this year in London.

Key Points:

• Online distribution models remove third party gatekeepers, connect the filmmaker directly with the audience, giving them the freedom to decide when the film is released on a global scale.
• Partnering with grassroots organisations to access their databases is a great way of connecting with the right audience. These people can be your film’s distributors and marketers, for free. These databases can even be used to fund as well as distribute campaigning documentaries.
• Social networking sites like MySpace (with over 190 million members) are a great way to spread free word of mouth marketing.
• There are now dozens of websites where you can upload video, Current TV, MySpace, Reeva, etc all with something different to offer but it is important you read the terms and conditions, especially with regards to rights.

FourDocs have a series of very useful video guides to shooting, editing and uploading a short doc. While you’re there check out their awesome online archive of classic  docs. I recommend This Is A True Story by Paul Berczeller, The Lift by Marc Isaacs, Divorce Iranian Style by Kim Longinotto, The Dinner Party by Paul Watson . . . oh there are lots of gems in there, too many to name here. Check it out.

If you want to download films from YouTube or other supported sites try KeepVid. Be aware of rights issues but if the films have a Creative Commons license that allows you to use them in your own creative endeavors then go ahead and mix and mash.

TubeMogul is a free service that allows you to upload your film to the top video sharing sites and then track who is watching it. Sounds like a good idea to me. Has anyone tried it? Feedback?