Give credit to TV producers for not making the same mistake as the music industry and actually making TV programs available free over the Internet. But lest we compliment them too much for their great vision, remember that TV shows don’t have nearly the shelf life of music and that the risk of video piracy is much less than the risk of copyright violation in the music world. Giving away old “Welcome Back Kotter” episodes is kind of a no-brainer.I also wonder why AOL and Time Warner are only making programs available in streaming format. Does anyone think people want to watch TV on their laptop? The only time I’ve seen anyone do that is on a plane or in a car and that’s when you don’t have a broadband connection.More interesting is Apple’s deal with ABC to distribute TV programs as downloads. That’s a better model but I’m not convinced the video iPod is the right device. Someone’s going to figure this out, though. Give the edge to Apple.