C-Net is continuing their great coverage of the net video issue, today with an analysis of the copyright status of online video sharing. Although the law might not support them on this, they’re quite right in distinguishing between video downloads (through BitTorrent or eDonkey) and streaming services like Google Video and YouTube. Essentially, all of these services (including the BitTorrent creators) have gotten the message that it’s about control: if you can and do control what appears on your network (and respond to complaints), you’re in better shape under the law.
I would say that this gets at a crucial “common sense” issue in copyright law. Downloading a file that you can keep and listen to forever is significantly “more wrong” than viewing a clip which is streamed online. An arguable copyright analysis of this issue might be that downloading breaks the “copy” part of copyright, where streaming essentially only breaks the “distribution” right.
On a related note, one of the most popular illegal video downloads (the Daily Show and Colbert Report) have now been made for sale on the iTunes music store. This seems to me to be insane business sense: who will pay for news video which will be out of date tomorrow? I don’t think I would pay $2 for a video to watch only once. We will see if this brings a crack-down on Daily Show sharing (perhaps they can make their video streams a bit more accessible, if they do).