Go back to the more transparent rationale that copyright infringement rests solely upon the person who uploaded the copyrighted item, not on people who merely link to it. That would allow us to link to YouTube videos for example (not host them, just link to them).
Why read an article on Wikipedia about say.... Shirley Temple, if someone else has an identical article AND video streaming as well so you can watch one of her movie or a newsreel interview.
Re-hosters will eventually figure this out, grab all of our content and improve upon it. We should get there before they do.
Strongly disagree. Wikipedia is built on the principle that freely licensed content rocks and is the future. Making use of non-freely licensed content makes that goal hypocritical and awkward.
(by the way; there is not necessairily an issue with linking to Youtube content - if it is correctly licensed, then it is fine)
Besides; no one has managed to make use of Wikipedia content and build on it in a way that you suggest - if it were so clear an advantage I am sure someone would have done it by now!
Wikipedia but with extra non-free images and videos is not a Wikipedia with significant extra value. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but we have millions :)
Tom