In this mess, we have also had a couple of content generators complain that their videos, hosted on sites such as DailyMotion and YouTube, were used on Weblog Tools Videos without their explicit consent. This got me thinking about the possible ramifications embedding videos on a blog or website. I could not find any permission or license information on the pages where the allegedly infringed videos were hosted and so I assumed that we should remove the videos, which we did.

• If the video page allows embedding, does that constitute implicit permission to post it elsewhere?
• Is there copyright and license information buried within the agreement that users electronically sign on uploading to YouTube? Do the video sites allow distinction between the various types of licensed content?
• If the original content provider is retained (such as using an YouTube embed) and a link is provided to the original video, is that enough? How does the regular user know when not to embed without permission? Should a formal request for permission be assumed in every case unless otherwise noted?

I have tried to find any references to laws, discussions or law suits that talk about the rights of the content viewer and embedder and the best I can come up with are discussions about previously infringing content which are irrelevant in this discussion. Can anyone shed any light on this?

To take this one step further, if you display embed code on your blog or website (think ShareThis), are you implicitly allowing your content (whatever the embed allows direct publish access to) to be republished elsewhere? If you do not allow sharing of your content without permission, are you just displaying certain types of social media tools that prevent wholesale copying of content? I know I personally never factored this into my thought process. Anyone else run into these issues? I wonder what the traditional media with electronic outlets are doing?

Lots of questions without a lot of good answers. If you have some insights, please leave a comment with relevant links and I will update the post for our readers.