Alright so take this thread with a grain of salt and a decent legal perspective... There is a company called Grooveshark that allows users to stream audio songs (like the kind you'd hear on a radio station) over the internet, the premise is you type in the name of the song, it comes up and you play it on the spot. They have their users upload new songs directly from their computer... Their DCMA policy works as follows: If they are contacted they will take down the song, but they offer an alternative: As opposed to having them take it down they can offer to pay you when people listen to your song... So thus far they haven't been sued, have been running for over 2 years, have 99% of all songs and over 3 million monthly unique users. So my question would be could someone apply this "strategy" to video streaming and legally speaking be "in the clear" or at the very least not get sued?
Try searching "grooveshark litigation" First link: I think you are making some assumptions that they do not have permission and that they have not been sued. I am not sure if that case is still pending, but in any event they have been sued or in other cases obtained a license. Lawsuits can take years so the results may not be readily apparent.
Nope, if your site gets big enough you'll get sued . Anybody can sue anyone, and companies just love to abuse this, especially when they have the money. If you don't get their licenses (which they don't even grant!) and run your site, they can sue you if they don't like the design (of course, they'll word it better) - the legal fees will make you stop your operation for sure...