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Ask Prof. Felten About DMCA's Effects
Princeton Computer Science Professor Edward W. Felten has been mentioned and quoted frequently on Slashdot, usually about DMCA matters and, more recently, about new state laws that may make it illegal to use "unapproved" networking devices, VPNs or firewalls with your home or office Internet connection. Please avoid questions that can be answered by reading the pages linked to here or with a bit of Google research. We'll post Prof. Felten's answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as he has time to answer them.
Prof. Felten has a weblog, Freedom to Tinker. It may answer some questions in advance. He is also teaching a class this semester called "Information Technology and the Law". The readings are online.
From a strictly technical standpoint there isn't much difference.
And this is the problem, and IMO a reason *not* to differentiate between the two - how can you make sure that no copy is being saved if you can't 'trust' the client that is downloading the content? To really make a difference, you need a working DRM-type system (which doesn't neccessarily mean it has to be protected by law); if you don't want DRM, it's *always* possible to reverse-engineer the protocol and record the content (case in point: ASFrecorder, a tool available to record Windows Media streams - which I do not actually use to 'pirate' streamed content, whatever that would mean, but to watch high-quality content on a low-bandwidth link).