I was thinking of putting together a humor video/image/article site, and my concern is this: can I take videos from other humor video sites (ebaums, compfused, youtube etc.) and display them on my site as long as I give credit and a link?
Many of those sites have a link you can use to place those videos on your site. It actually takes teh viewer to the original site. But if you are trading traffic with the site the hits you send through these links get counted by the traffic trading script.
Are you uploading the videos to your server first? Some sites get bitchy about you using their bandwidth for your content.
I'm not sure how Youtube etc. function, but in general you are in very murky water if you don't have express permission from the author of that content to display the videos. Be sure to check out any Terms of Use these sites might have and make sure that you understand everything. For example: If someone uploads a video to ExampleSite.com they give ExampleSite.com permission to show that content. That doesn't give you permission to take that video and show it on your site. The author of that video can then later find out that you used their content and sue you or lodge a DMCA complaint. It doesn't matter that you acknowledged where it came from. With copyright the best policy is that if you don't have permission from the author/creator you shouldn't use it.