you might try just dragging the clip into the timeline instead of pasting. I’m on 7 and this doesn’t happen to me. you could try the good ol trashing the prefs.
is final cut open when you are trying to copy the folder? it might be because final cut is using them. i can’t really think of any other reason why it wouldn’t copy.
I don’t know if it will work with your camera or not but you could do a video “pass-through” with it. connect the camera to firewire and then hook the camera up to a tv. it works with my canon gl.