@charlie.wilson
Two different people said those things.
When people cross promote on YouTube, it is discussed beforehand. It is legal to say something like "I have received permission from the original author to repost this content." Every time I ask someone if I may share their stuff on SteemIt they kindly reply affirmatively. As you said, most people want their stuff to be shared these days. But if it is copyrighted you still have to ask. This is not an issue of SteemIt rules, this is an issue of legality in most countries. We want to do everything we can to prevent being shut down, because once we go mainstream plutocrats will do anything they can to shut us up or co-opt us.
The following comes from YouTube support:
The standard YouTube licence is detailed in the Terms of Service, but basically you grant YouTube to broadcast your video on YouTube. Apart from that, you retain all copyright.Unfortunately, media companies seem to think that anything they find on YouTube is fair game, and equally unfortunately, they have the sort of lawyers you wouldn't want to be up against in court. The image sharing service Twitpic recently suffered a PR setback when they amended their ToS to reflect the fact that this happens, and this was interpreted by users as "Twitpic robs you of your copyright". And unfortunately yet again, if you're in the US and you didn't register your copyright, although the TV company still (probably) broke the law, you'll not be able to claim damages and may even have to pay all your legal fees even if you do win.
This was in regards to someone's content being used on TV. That TV station did exactly what you did. Do you have a high-priced lawyer, as well? If not, I suggest you take 3 minutes to add value to the post. For example, "I think this video is really important because ___." This comes closer to Fair Use. A review would be even better.
Many websites will include a video from YouTube on their page, give credit to the creator, and profit from their page.
What they are doing is also most likely illegal. The trick is that many of them are owned by larger media companies that won't easily be shut down. SteemIt is full of counter-culture anti-authority types, so we already have a target on us.