Huh? Isn’t video on the web ubiquitous already?

Sort of. Video on the web today is seriously lacking when it comes to things like addressability (e.g., a standard way to link to a specific time segment or frame region), standard codecs, and metadata. All of these are really important if video (and other media types) are to fully take advantage of the web’s architecture — among other things making video more amenable to reuse — legally enabled by most CC licenses, but not exactly facilitated by today’s video-on-the-web technologies.

So Creative Commons is a supporter of the W3C’s Video on the Web Activity Proposal, appropriately subtitled as such:

Video on the Web is not just what you see — it’s what you can search, discover, create, distribute and manage.

There are actually several efforts included in the proposed activity. Not all will bear fruit; others may take years. However, upgrading video and other media to first class on the Web is important, so we wish these efforts the best, as well as (open in nature) efforts outside of the W3C.

A workshop report linked from the proposal makes for excellent background reading.