is it legal to put up some parts of the movie say like only clips less than 4 mins? Plus what if a profile as lot of such clips?? Is it legal?? I have seen lot of profiles like that..
Well it depends. If you have the explicit permission to put up video clips from the movie then it would be fine. It would make it easier if you own the rights to the movies. However, if you do not own it and do not have the green light from the copyright owners, you cannot by law to even put up 1 second of the clip. Taken from Youtube http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines At the same time, read up http://www.youtube.com/t/howto_copyright
It isn't legal to do so, but at this point it is extremely unlikely you will face any repercussions, beyond getting the clip taken down.
Though you are right about it being unlikely to face any repercussions remember the days of Naptser when court systems would make "examples" out of grandparents for permitting their grandchildren to download mp3's on Napster... Some of them are still paying off their $20,000-$40,000 fines.. Every now and then our judicial system likes to make pointless examples out of people. So I wouldn't suggest uploading ANY copyrighted material to YouTube.
Viacom already won the suit against Youtube and now Youtube has to release the youtube user data , see http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN0329430120080705 . It would not be long, if it is not already done so, to get the data of those who uploaded the information. That would certainly be bad news for those who who ignore the law.
Except you missed the key part where YouTube isn't giving them enough data to identify specific individuals users. Viacom isn't interested in suing users, they are suing YouTube because that's where the money is.
I know that the current lawsuit is about the viewer data to prove a case against Youtube but if this succeed, what would stop them from suing to obtain the data of those who upload illegal data ? Even if viacom does not do that, I am sure that Youtube would be cautious about having copyright contents on their system and may take action against the uploader. In whichever case, it is never a good idea to try to see how far you can bend the rules or find ways to circumvent them.