With MPAA cracking down on Usenet services, it is no surprise one of the bigger ones, GUBA is trying to go legit. The San Francisco-based start-up which lets you download videos from Usenet groups via a web interface, today introduced a new video upload and sharing service, well which is much like any other 95 odd video services.

The only difference is that the new service, GUBA Upload, allows you to upload videos and then have them automatically formatted for the Apple iPod / iTunes, Flash and Sony PlayStation Portable formats. Does anyone want to make odds on how quickly this formatting feature is going to be copied? Also, the 200 MB in uploads is puny space. GUBA says it will expand this limit to 1 GB in April 2006, which is like ten days from now – so why start with 200 MB to begin with.

GUBA Upload provides video creators with an individual URL to their GUBA Upload page so they can share their videos with friends, family and fans.

Site visitors can download and view videos in their preferred format and can subscribe to the video creator’s content via an iTunes video podcast (using RSS) which automatically pushes the newest videos to the end-user’s computer.

GUBA will roll out additional video upload features in Q2 2006, including reporting tools to track viewer visits, comments and monetization capabilities enabling content owners to profit from the viewing of their videos by a vast Internet audience.

I wrote about GUBA last year, though wasn’t explicit in pointing out the nefarious content on their site and the problems that go along with it. That alone should be reason for a makeover. GUBA is fortunate that the MPAA hasn’t come after them (and instead gone after, NZB-Zone, BinNews, and DVDRS), mostly because they don’t index full length movies. From the looks of it, the Usenet search game is going to get a lot of attention from the MPAA types.