Is this ethical or legal?

Suppose a video company provides video trailers for their products.

Is it ethical to put these in a members area and charge users for access to them?

Isn't that profiting from someone elses trademark?

Is it ethical if the studio agrees, from the surfers perspective?

I do that on my site with a couple sponsors. I always get permission and set up the page as an upsell, making it clear that the content is not mine, but I am "recommending it" to my customers. I rotate the content rather than create a bigger and bigger archive. That way I am not competing with the sponsor.

The sponsors like it because if the customer has PAID to get into your membership section, they are already "qualified" and will be more likely to pull out a credit card a second time. Giving away free content breeds requests for more free content.

video trailers are just that - video trailers. members area or not - their purpose is for the webmaster to use in anyway that benefits the movies in their members area.

I allow affiliates to do that with the FHGs and hosted free sites from Condom Cash for the simple reason, existing paysite members are more likely to pull out a credit card and join another paysite than a regular surfer.

You cant beat getting highly qualified traffic directly to the marketing tools that work :)

Regards,

Lee