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Title: Important Information Regarding Links to YouTube Content Post by: OldFatGuy on August 20, 2007, 05:13PM This topic has come up a couple of times on the forum, so I'm going to reply to it here one time, rather than post a separate response every time it's brought up.
Hotlinking to a video on YouTube does NOT constitute an act of piracy or copyright infringement. EMI has a licensing agreement with YouTube, under which the recording label and the artists are compensated for material posted on YouTube. It is the responsibility of YouTube (or, more accurately, Google) to police their own content and remove files which are deemed to be in violation of the licensing agreement. YouTube encourages hotlinking, as they are advertiser supported and they earn their money on click-throughs from those hotlinks. If they remove the content, the link on our site will simply cease to function. A hotlink is the cyber-equivalent of someone saying, "Hey, did you see the original Picasso hanging in the laundromat?" and then telling you where to go to see it. If the Picasso is a fake, the person who told you about it has not broken any law or violated any copyright. |