I've seen a few sites for sale here and elsewhere for video code sites, such as videocodezone.com . For those not familiar, these sites post the html code for 10,000 videos (mostly music videos). Visitors then cut-and-paste these codes into their web pages, and can then play music videos from their own pages. The video code site also plays the music videos on their pages. However, NONE of these sites actually host the videos. The code pulls the video from sites such as Yahoo Music. I've heard several people on both sides of the argument say something along these lines It's legal - you are not hosting the music video, so you have not broken any laws. It's not legal - you don't have permission to the videos. Some have suggested it is bandwidth hijacking. What's your take on the issue?
well unless you get unequivocal condonance from the hosting site/s then it is nefarious, no if and or buts
IMO this is an extremely grey area. One the one hand, Yahoo and others are making these videos publically accessible, therefore allowing you to link to them. Physically the videos are never stored on your server, and Yahoo are free to withdraw them at any time. On the other hand, Yahoo almost certainaly didn't expect people to be using these videos in this way. You're using their bandwidth (and therefore costing them money) without them getting anything in return. Do the music videos have adverts prepended/appended? If so, I don't think there's anything wrong here and I wouldn't see why Yahoo would complain - they're getting their advertisers more eyeballs, and thus potentially bringing in new revenue. If, however, they are just the music videos, then I'l say what's being done is at least morally wrong, if not legally so.
It seems like it would be such an easy problem to prevent, or profit from. Yahoo! could simply prepend their videos with heavy commercialization if they wanted to and generate revenue that way.