Josh Wolf, a local vlogger, posted the following recently on his "The Revolution Will Be Televised" blog about Current TV's new rights agreement and payment schedule for content submitted to Current:

Under the new new licensing agreement, by uploading a video to Current TV, you can't do anything with it for three months. Even if Current TV doesn't want to put your piece on television, you are contractually forbidden from putting the video on your videoblog, and from trying to get it out through almost any other avenue besides Current. In the event that Current TV decides they want to air your video, it is my understanding that they would obtain all rights to the piece in perpetuity; you would be compensated for your work according to Current's new incremental pay-scale.

The payscale basically allows for a maximum payment of $1,000 for your sixth piece that airs, which, um, barely gets you a decent videocamera (and a piece airing every week would net you a saraly barely over the median for the Bay Area). We've snarked on Current (formerly INdTV) in the past, but they've been nice to us, letting us in to they're opening party for pictures of Al Gore and friends. But wow, haven't these people heard of the Creative Commons? We guess with all the rhetoric about 'democratizing the media' we forgot that this is a for-profit enterprise, but they're setting themselves up to lose to new video aggregators like Yahoo and Google's products who already reach a lot more homes than Current ever will through cable or satellite.