A revolution is about to destroy our traditional ideas of television and radio for good; and this is hardly a bold prediction. This March, the BBC’s iPlayer reached 17.2 million viewers. Zattoo and Livestation have just launched services to view live terrestrial television over the web. Joost, from the makers of Skype, allows video content to be viewed online. These and other streaming services which deliver on-demand video and audio over the web raise some novel issues for technologists, business people and lawyers alike.
We are used to downloading music or video files to our computer for later use and possibly copying to other media or devices. By contrast to downloading, internet radio and video services such as the iPlayer use a range of streaming technologies for instant viewing or listening without waiting for a complete download.
