Hi, I have been trying to find answer to this question and it seems very vague and not clear, here it goes. I am coming up with a site that gathers all videos all over the internet and compiling them into one site, and on the proposed site, it has thumbnails (fetched from the same video sites) and the embedded videos and the codes they offer. My question, is it illegal to compile all videos in one site and offer the same service? Like I will arrange them by category, show the thumbnails and provide the codes for people to embed. Is this also true with other sites that offer codes? Some people define it as deep-linking and some defines it as bandwidth stealing, my only point is that they were offering it for you to embed in the first place (so they would have already presumed "consented" bandwidth stealing will be a major issues), so compiling everything shouldn't be illegal right? or wrong? I do not want to finish up the site without knowing opinions from other gurus. Please advise
It sounds vague and unclear because it is. It is right on the borderline so there are ways you can arguably do it legally, and ways that you can run afoul of the law. It sounds like an interesting idea. I think there are certainly ways to do it legally. Much as a site can aggregate, collect, organize, categorize, and list web links, like Google News, I see no reason why you couldn't make a site that aggregated video content from around the web. Exactly how much or what you can post and stay within the law is the question. Whether or not you could just put all the embed codes would the issue that I would have to research and think about before I would offer an opinion. The question becomes how much of someone else's content can you post. There is no clear rule on this, but you read in the news and there are some cases. Google gets sued because newspapers don't like the way they do something - there is no absolute right or wrong until a judge someone make a relevant ruling. That is why the Internet is still like the Wild West. This is pretty similar, legally, to the site in your sig. I don't know where you live and that would be a factor as to how cautious you need to be.
Thanks browntwn, you hit it right on the bat, this is where my dilemma is, how much of a content I can get from a site. The issue I am having is that, why would there be apis and rss of objects if these werent offerent to be "sucked" down and compiled? I know and read TOS but this is definitely baffling me. I cannot find on any site saying "You cannot post all of our content in your site" when they actually condone by giving away codes. I truly will stand corrected if I am wrong on this matter, and it is better to know it is wrong early as now before I run into deep trouble just because of my ignorance in this matter.
You are not presenting with a new or unique idea here. Lots of video site clones do this every day. I don't have any examples, but I have seen them and I have seen scripts for them. A lot of them are user submitted, but I would guess that you have the same feature and intention. RSS content is "In the Wild". A website can ask you to cease and desist using their intellectual property. That probably won't happen though. If it does, you just do... End of problem. You have nothing to lose here. What? A domain name? Big deal, get another one. Google (YouTube) loves their videos being viewed. They hardly ever bother anyone for embedding what they freely allow everyone to embed. You have no real big risk going in and a lot to gain if you can get the right kind of visitors. Go for it. You'll be fine.