Hi Lightscape,
I run my own program and here are the answers to your questions from my point of view (obviously I can't speak for the sponsors you are promoting):-
1. Yes thumbnail cropping is fine. After all, you would be promoting my content and trying to make an affiliate sale out of it so I am sure you're not going to crop it so it looks ridiculous - unless you don't like money
2. I would think all programs would want you to use as many of their promo galleries as possible, so no, it's not considered abuse.
3. This is the weird one - it sounds like your sponsors are some cheapskate / small companies. I host all my own videos for our free galleries (any decent sized site / program would do the same) and I have all the 2257 information for all our scenes. If the programs you are using require you to host the videos yourself I would find a different program to sponsor. After all, if you're hosting the videos yourself it will be eating up your bandwidth (which you are paying for) and you may not even make any sales out of it. For bigger programs, hosting videos for free galleries is just part of the advertising and marketing budget - I don't see why an affiliate should have to pay for that themselves. So I guess this answers your question - change the programs you are promoting to ones that host their own videos - 2257 doesn't affect you as it is the programs responsibility.
Good luck
