  The rapid growth of multimedia consumption has triggered technical, economic,
and business innovations that improve the quality and accessibility of content.
It has also opened new markets, promising large revenues for industry players.
However, new technologies also pose new questions regarding the legal aspects
of content delivery, which are often resolved through litigation between
copyright owners and content distributors. The precedents set by these cases
will act as a game changer in the content delivery industry and will shape the
existing offerings in the market in terms of how new technologies can be
deployed and what kind of pricing strategies can be associated with them. In
this paper, we offer a tutorial on key copyright and communications laws and
decisions related to storage and transmission of video content over the
Internet. We summarize legal limitations on the deployment of new technologies
and pricing mechanisms, and explain the implications of recent lawsuits.
Understanding these concerns is essential for engineers engaged in designing
the technical and economic aspects of video delivery systems.
