Monetizing other people's videos?! - Mixed feelings

[Dowlphin 463]

I've discovered a weird thing in the content monetization department and have mixed feelings about it:

 

When I checked Youtube's embed statistics of some of my videos, I noticed that there is a certain website with significant view count. I checked it out and it turns out it's a service that puts little ad messages in videos that you have embedded on your blog or website, and when people click on that ad, the website/blog owner gets money.

Now this type of monetization is offered by Youtube, too. It's pretty much the same principle, but with a crucial difference: Youtube of course only allows this monetization if you own the rights to the video and all of its content.

 

So I find it a bit weird that people are monetizing other people's videos when embedding them on their websites/blogs.

I can only assume that the fact the ads aren't shown on the Youtube page changes the legal relevance of this, and it's fine to have ads on your website/blog, but it still feels a little strange to include ads directly in the embedded video player. It makes the ads no longer related to access to your blog/website, but to access to foreign content. And the fact that such video views don't appear under the name of the website/blog that embedded it, but directly under the name of that service, amplifies the issue. It just doesn't feel right.

 

What do you think?

Edited August 8, 2013 by Dowlphin

[Celtore 2,770]

I don't know the rules regarding this, but that sounds unbelievably sketchy. You shouldn't be monetizing on other people's content, especially unique content protected under copyright by default. As for my opinion on blog content and video ads being unrelated, I'm kind of glad for that. We really don't need one big tracking system set up to keep ads relevant across all mediums... Oh wait, forgot about Google.

[Dowlphin 463]

Mystery solved. It's Cheezburger. After checking some new statistics and the view counts, it became clear, and once I checked the site without adblocker, I saw the embedded ads.