Clips sent to Grouper and YouTube -- which are promoting their services as great for families -- are not screened before they are posted for viewing.
But executives at both services said there had been few instances of anyone trying to slip porn onto their sites. (Both have anti-pornography clauses in their user agreements.) And soon after subscribers complained about such clips, the executives said, they were deleted.
Google Video, which also has an anti-porn clause in its terms of services, reviews all clips before they are made available for viewing, according to the website. Company executives did not respond to inquiries for more details.
To compare the three services, I shot a brilliant, one-minute, 17-second clip of Earl doing a sit-and-stay (well, he sort of stayed) and then getting a treat. Spielberg has nothing to fear, but I thought it would be fun for family members far away to see the clip.
You can see it too (more on that below). But like most of the clips on these sites, it's almost exclusively of interest to those who know the people (or pets) involved.
You also can see some old Web favorites, including the original "Star Wars" kid who ineptly acts out a battle scene and some highly embarrassing karaoke. There are new candidates for high-camp status as well, including a just-added clip from the Mrs. Kansas pageant on YouTube.
But there also are some genuinely wonderful little films that can be found. The most amazing one I saw: "Russian Climbing" at the Google site.
Here's how Earl and I fared with the three services:
Grouper
After adding a simple title to my video, which in the MPEG-1 format was a rather hefty 21-megabyte file, I clicked the button to upload the clip to this service. Less than five minutes later it was processed and posted.
I could have chosen to make the clip available only to people in a group that I had created or to people who were invited to join. But in this case I went public. It can be searched under the keywords "dog" and "treat."
Because Grouper is a peer-to-peer file-sharing program -- like the old Napster before the courts struck it down for enabling the illegal distribution of recorded music -- it theoretically could be used to distribute copyrighted movies. But Felser said the company would track down and take action against any subscriber who did that.
One advantage of Grouper being a file-sharing program is that clips can be downloaded for viewing offline or for sending in an e-mail.
