Is live broadcasting considered recording? (That's not what happened here, I'm just wondering, given police erased the video in this case)
Probably. I don't think the reply to "quit filming us!" of "I'm not, I'm live broadcasting" will help your situation out much if ever in the same scenario. I do think that if you are going to record something where preservation of the video could be vital, live broadcasting that persists is the way to go. I've never tried such services (like Qik). Do they save everything you broadcast?
Probably, because the stream is normally recorded on both the client and the server as well as streamed.
Exactly what I was thinking. Immediately broadcast the content. Perhaps use one of those wireless SD cards and have someone nearby recording it. The camera (or phone) can be confiscated but the data is stored remotely.
Or how about write-once media? Perhaps physically destroying or confiscating that would be more protected under the law ?
If he was clever, he'd have avoided using the phone (to avoid overwriting the actual footage files) and then sucked the files off of the internal memory using an undelete tool or dd. That could be particularly interesting.