Good point. Perhaps use only parts of the material (not the entire clips). This should be covered by "fair use".
And perhaps using the clips for other purposes than "viewing" may in fact be fair use. Especially since you are trying to find a method for not viewing them.
IANAL as well, but this notion of "fair use" seems slippy. I had a look in the French article that lists some exceptions that allow sharing copyrighted material, and did not find any obvious match with the potential shared database.
Yeah, but if you lose enough info such that it doesn't play like the original or can't be reconstituted into the original it's still large enough of a change that it should steer clear from copyright issues. No one's really tested exactly where the distinction falls.
