If embedding stuff isnt classed as redistributing it, then this could be seen as a potential loophole.

But if its not redistribution, it must be something else. Public performance perhaps. If so, this sort of use is also already covered by copyright and creative commons.

Technology has already made it quite simply to try to lever profit out of someone elses videos, and the same is certainly true of text blogs where using google blog search, and sorting by date, often reveals a lot of splogs.

I mean when it comes to rehosting content, its pretty easy to point to things like creative commons and say hmm, this is commercial use, so you cant redistribute my video, because my creative commons license is non-comemrcial.

But if people could claim that embedding stuff is not in any way copyright infringement, then creative commons is no good for protecting vloggers against these dispicabl practices.

So anyways I didnt find many legal cases, but I thought maybe the problems google had with their image search was a fairly good match. They were embedding the fulsize images in their search results, now they dont, and they allow you to see the image in its original context. I assume this was for legal reasons, and things like whether it was a thumbnail or the full image seemed to be important. So Im presuming the same is true for video, we just need someone to actually have a court case to act as an important lesson for others.

The video skin seems quite intrusive but is it really any different to embedding video in a blog that has some google ads on the same page?

Certainly, as Mr. Street seems to be suggesting, creators could also do this for their own sites. My concern is enabling the less scrupulous.