Online video is all the rage, the subject of endless buzz, not just in Web logs and chat rooms, but on network TV and wherever big media congregate.

The success of YouTube (www.youtube.com) is a case in point. The remarkable company, based in San Mateo, Calif., isn't even a year and a half old, and viewers are flocking to it, watching 2.5 billion videos in June alone. An amazing 65,000 new videos are uploaded every day.

Where does all this video come from? Most of it, as you would expect, consists of short, amateur productions, some creative, some inane. But there's a surprising amount of professional content as well, including TV clips, commercials and snippets from movies.

Uploading videos is free, with a 100 MB limit that keeps each to a reasonable size. As with many of the new social networking sites, each video requires "tags" that help users find what they want.

How does YouTube get away with copyrighted material on its site? The memory of Napster's conflicts with the Recording Industry Association of America looms large, but YouTube has remained free of lawsuits.

Thus far, the company is being treated as an online service provider, meaning it is not responsible for user uploads and can avoid litigation by removing offending materials when asked. YouTube seems to be shielded, as long as it makes no profit from the uploading of commercial materials, even if much of that material is pirated.

To say that this is an awkward situation, and one that will doubtless receive more and more scrutiny from the big media companies, is an understatement. Every new technology puts the spotlight on copyright, its uses and its limitations.

My own thought is that TV producers should experiment with this format. An audience the size of YouTube's might be the perfect solution for a struggling cable TV channel to boost its ratings, releasing complete shows (perhaps on a time-delayed basis) and infusing them with advertising.

Is there a business model here? NBC is experimenting with YouTube, and other big media outfits should be doing the same. But as they do, YouTube needs to search for a model itself.

The betting at this end is that the company's viewers won't remain content with video snippets when longer formats are becoming available. But will they buy into paid content?

YouTube gets high marks for innovation, but these are questions that new competition will force it to answer.

Those longer formats I mention above include television shows and feature-length movies, both now very much in the spotlight.

Consider Apple, whose musical success with the iPod is now turning into video success as customers download TV shows such as "Lost" and "Battlestar Galactica." Forward-thinking Hollywood studios may also want to increase the revenue stream from older content, the market for which has already been established through DVD sales.

But where are the movies?

It's clear that the studios are waiting for copy protection to fall into place, and we're seeing new signs of activity on that front. A video-sharing site, Guba, is signing deals with the likes of Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures. Based in San Francisco, the hitherto unheralded Guba (www.guba.com) offers both free and paid content, with videos available for downloading and playing on Windows Media Player.

Now Movielink, a movie distribution site bankrolled by five Hollywood studios, is moving to make downloadable films more attractive to consumers. Because of digital rights management schemes, it has been impossible to copy downloaded movies to DVD, a problem for customers who dislike having to watch movies on their PCs.

Movielink (www.movielink.com) has acquired software from SonicSolutions that will allow DVD burning but prevent endless copying. At more or less the same time, Warner Bros. signed a deal with file-sharing specialist BitTorrent to enhance movie distribution.

What we're seeing is a movie industry in flux as it tries to figure out the business strategy for feature films on the Internet. In the case of Movielink, the new software will only work if the studios sign off on allowing their films to be burned to DVD in the first place.

That may require more negotiation among industry moguls, but it's clear that movies won't become hot Internet property until the problems of long download times, poor video quality and DVD copying are resolved.

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