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Media Government The Courts News

20 Year Anniversary of Home Taping Decision 182

Posted by michael from the devil-in-the-details dept.
jemnery writes "It's worth noting that January 17th is the 20th anniversary of the US Supreme Court's decision in favour of Sony to allow home taping of broadcast programmes. This is something we all take for granted these days, but at the time it was a close-run thing. You can read about case no. 81-1687 here." The Guardian has a commentary.
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20 Year Anniversary of Home Taping Decision More

20 Year Anniversary of Home Taping Decision

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  • What a significant legal win... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:13PM (#8009768) Journal
    ...that the FCC could find a way to overturn in the blink of an eye. We should remain vigilant about this.

  • PVRs and advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AndruUK ( 578299 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:16PM (#8009789) Homepage
    Why can television/advertising companies prevent PVRs like TiVo from having features to skip advertising in their products when it is perfectly legal to store the data and fast forward or rewind? Why is automation of this process illegal?
    • It's not illegal, you moron. It's just that Tivo made a decision not to have those features.

    • Re:PVRs and advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Naffer ( 720686 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:25PM (#8009850) Journal
      I think that the absence of a 30-second skip button or automated skipping feature on the TIVO is a result of TIVO trying not to offend too many people at once. Many networks dislike how easy TIVO makes it to record shows. If TIVO made it equally as easy not to record commercials, then they could easily make some pretty nasty enemies with media companies.

      • 30 second skip on TiVo (Score:5, Informative)

        by runlvl0 ( 198575 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:46PM (#8009998) Homepage Journal
        ...the absence of a 30-second skip button or automated skipping feature on the TIVO...

        select - play - select - 3 - 0 - select

        Unadvertised, but there. Voila.

      • 30-second skip button (Score:2, Informative)

        by bradams ( 241228 )
        Press SELECT-PLAY-SLECT-3-0-SELECT, now the advance button is a 30 second skip button.
      • And the networks have a legitimate claim here. Their entire existence is based on advertising revenue, and if people don't watch the commercials anymore, companies won't want to pay to have their commercial aired.

        The REAL problem comes with cable broadcasts. They *are* supported by commercials, to the point where they have just as many commercials as network stations, yet the consumers still have to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of watching these commercials. I'm not sure why people put up with this.
        • Their entire existence is based on advertising revenue ~.
          ...and the same networks' entire marketing departments are full of no-nothing, oxygen deprived Epsilons.

          If they were Betas, perhaps, they would realize that by dumping the commerical break in favor of using product placement, "Picture-in-picture," or some other advertisement method, they would give people what they want (uninterruped, longer shows), and still get their revenue.

        • And the networks have a legitimate claim here. Their entire existence is based on advertising revenue, and if people don't watch the commercials anymore, companies won't want to pay to have their commercial aired.

          That does not make it a legitimate claim. Neither networks nor advertisers have any right for their shows or ads to be watched how, or by whom, they please. The best they can do is to be able to prevent people from seeing them.

          If advertising supported TV can't keep itself together, then the best

          • Re:PVRs and advertising (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Stray7Xi ( 698337 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @11:16PM (#8011676)
            That advertising you hate is what makes it possible for those shows to be made. I love advertising for that reason I just hate being subjected to it. How else could you get a newspaper so cheap, or so many free websites. The HBO model only works because there's so few pay channels. I wouldn't mind being able to pick and choose channels and pay individually, but I realize the channels I like probably don't have as high as viewership and their budget would go down.

            Furthermore advertising places the burden on consumers in an uneven manner, one that's biased in geeks favor. Consider this, the consumers cost for much of the web is being subjected to advertising (through popups, banners, etc) but a geek can avoid those. Hence I love pop-ups, since there's so many people out there PAYING to make my experience better and I don't get the detriment of those pop-ups. Now apply that TV, just use a TIVO (or similar) to skip commercials.

            I don't like when people make a cause to stamp out advertising... it'll only make it worse for everyone. What would happen if everyone had pop-ups disabled?? Sites would instead do clickthroughs ads (or Loading page, please look at this advertisement for 15 seconds)...

            I'm about as anti-consumerism as they come, but I recognize when it benefits me.

    • Re:PVRs and advertising (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Svet-Am ( 413146 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:25PM (#8009856) Homepage
      I think the smarter route would be to require that the commercials be recorded along with the core program, but have a digital flag that allows the end user to either skip them or watch them in sequence with the program.

      A corollary to this would be to allow the user to watch all of the commercials in one back-to-back block as well. (I for one, actually find commercials informative from time to time).

      • Sorry, but it is. If you have to record the commercials but not watch them, all that means is you end up wasting space on your drive. At best consumers ignore the commercials, at worst they get angry for having them waste space. If you make the customer watch the commercials all at once, they turn the commercials on, walk away (or flip channels), and come back when they're done.

        What we're gonna see with PVRs is obvious. The manufacturers will make deals with the media outlets to keep people watching comm

        • I think PVR makers will always include some sort of work around if the player requires the recording of commercials. Why? So they can play both sides of the field. They can assure media companies that people cannot easily change a setting to simply block all commercials. At the same time, they know that PVR sales would drop dramatically if there was no way to bypass commercials. I for one would find a PVR to be completely useless if this were the case.
        • What we're gonna see with PVRs is obvious. The manufacturers will make deals with the media outlets to keep people watching commercials.

          What the advertisers are doing now is incorporating the advertisements into the shows itself. Commonly seen on cartoons with merchandising (pokemon, etc) but more and more often in more mainstream show. Its an extension of the old James Bond Rolex watch thing.

          Can't fast forward over that.

          Michael

      • How about linking commercials? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jetson ( 176002 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @06:06PM (#8010116) Homepage
        The biggest problem I have with commercials, particularly during specials like the "movie of the week" or sports events is the way they hammer the same one at you over and over. It's not unusual in a 3-hour broadcast block to see the major sponsors included in every break. Do I really need to see the same breakfast/car/deoderant/tampon advertisement 12 times, six of which are in the last half-hour of the movie?

        If the PVR industry wants to include commercials to keep the broadcasters happy, I'd really like to see some sort of AI that recognizes duplicates and links back to the original. That way they would take up less disk space, and it could present the commercial the first time and skip it after that for the rest of the current recording....
        • Do I really need to see the same breakfast/car/deoderant/tampon advertisement 12 times, six of which are in the last half-hour of the movie?

          Yes, because that's the entire point of commercials. The advertising firms are counting on repetition to drive the point home. The name of this game is brand recognition, and if that means playing the same damn jingle 12 times in a two hour movie broadcast, then so be it. The jingle will be so ingrained in your head that you can't forget it. This is considered a win b

    • Why can television/advertising companies prevent PVRs like TiVo from having features to skip advertising in their products when it is perfectly legal to store the data and fast forward or rewind?

      The answer is that they can't. At least not in the analog signal that is broadcast over the air or cable that is your TV signal. However, they may make deals with digital providers not to provide a pure digital signal unless there is a way to block the skipping of commercials. Much like officially licensed DV

  • The death of moviemaking (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:20PM (#8009817)
    According to MPAA head Jack Valenti.

    Too damn bad he was totally wrong - we would have been spared the Star Wars prequels...

  • MPAA & RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    which would be overturned in an instant if the MPPA and RIAA get their way

  • *sighs* (Score:5, Insightful)

    by extra the woos ( 601736 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:21PM (#8009829)
    yep, good ruling (blah blah blah)... but instead of just respecting the ruling the media conglomorates keep trying to work around it... I'm still waiting to see how all this HDTV stuff is going to pan out, but I imagine we wont know for a few years yet. Who knows, maybe we'll get another ruling saying that they can't give over the air stuff a "no copy" bit and that we should have the SAME RIGHTS with the new digital content as we do with the analog content (wishful thinking, I know)...

    BUT I'M NOT SURE I CARE ANYMORE!!! My dad, my mom, they used to watch lots of TV. No more, now they spend their time on the internet same as me. My dad might watch an hour of TV a week (that's probably a stretch)... My mom maybe 4 hours a week (thats like half an hour a day lol).

    As much as i dont wanna see big copy protections in the new HDTV stuff, I DONT CARE because there is NOTHING WORTH COPYING!!! I'd rather spend my time on the net (or gasp, outside or hanging with friends!) and reading things that I actually LEARN from while talking to my friends in other states on various chat protocols and listening to music that *i enjoy*...not to mention not spending 1/4-1/2 the time staring at adds (thanks firebird and setting ad servers to localhost!)

    so in closing, great ruling... but to me and most of the people I know, TV is a thing of the past. If they care about staying in business they shouldn't worry about copy protection, they should worry about making content that i'd actually WATCH (babylon 5 anyone, but of course, a thing of the past!). (family guy? nope, gone but they might bring it back) (reality shows? I'd rather kill myself)

    • Re:*sighs* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:29PM (#8009887) Homepage Journal
      blah blah blah.

      Whats going to happen when they say you can't copy digital media on your computer, are you going to care then?
      You don't live on and island(metephorically, for all I know you do) and these ruling will impact you. not as mucha s other, pehaps. Assuming you line in the US of A, I strongly suggestyou write some letters to the appropriate people and find out what there views are.

      If the rulingturned out the other way, in all lilyhood you wouldn't have DVDs becasue there never would ahve been a mrket for it. Nobody was going to buy a video player that can't record on, just like there 8 tracks, cassettes, and radios.

      • Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        If the rulingturned out the other way, in all lilyhood you wouldn't have DVDs becasue there never would ahve been a mrket for it. Nobody was going to buy a video player that can't record on, just like there 8 tracks, cassettes, and radios.

        Yeah, I know CD players were a disaster until people got burners to record. Oh, wait... Interesting that several of my best friends in their 20s have a DVD player, but no VCR. No way to record shows, home video or whatever. Seems bloody popular to me, all the same...

        Kje

        • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Skavookie ( 3659 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @06:21PM (#8010224)
          Let us envision an alternate history in which the ruling had turned the other way, and VCRs were outlawed. How would things have played out from there? Of course, we can't really know for sure, but I think this is a plausible scenario:

          On January 17th, 1984 (funny, that), the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of Universal City Studios, Inc., and preserved the status quo by banning the use of devices known as "Video Cassette Recorders." Some time later, in the 90's, a new technology was developed called DVD. DVDs were shiny disks that contained entire movies or television shows and could be played on DVD players at the user's liesure. Unfortunately this technology never really took off, for without customers in the habbit of buying video content to view at home, nobody produced such content, and without such content being produced, consumers did not bother buying DVD players.

          Now back to reality, why did the legalization of VCRs prevent this fate? Because it filled in a gap. With VCRs people could not only watch videos produced by others, but record their own videos. Since people were buying VCRs anyway, a market for videos developed, and by the time DVD appeared people were in the habbit of buying stored video. Sure they had to transition to a new technology and buy new players, but the prior use of VCRs probably made that easier and smoother. It solved the chicken and egg problem by selling chickens and eggs bundled together.

          Of course, this is just speculation. We have no way of being certain of what would have happened, but at the very least it seems plausible that banning VCRs would have hindered the acceptance of DVDs.
    • Well, I have been watching TV shows, but the catch is that I've been watching them from DVDs that I bought. There are a few interesting shows on TV but I guess I never watch them until they are on DVD.

  • And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NowboyKeel ( 740878 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:22PM (#8009834) Homepage
    I'm not (legally) able to record my favorite songs from a streaming radio station for "listening at a later time."

    • Re:And yet... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TeknoHog ( 164938 )
      I'm not (legally) able to record my favorite songs from a streaming radio station for "listening at a later time."

      Interesting, where in the world is this?

      In Finland, a few major radio channels quit their Internet broadcast on January 1st, because of licensing issues with Gramex (basically our equivalent of RIAA). Which pisses me off as I have ADSL but no radio. I used to crontab MPlayer to record one show once a week, but I guess I have to get a radio tuner and hook it up to my soundcard ;-).

  • Mankind has developed _A LOT_ in 20 years! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:22PM (#8009840)
    It is breathtaking to go back 20 years and see _HOW ENORMOUSLY_ mankind has developed since then! I mean, I was having a hard time believing this story was true. I was born in 1973 and I stopped and thinked about how much have happened since I was born. Like colour television, people started to get those in the middle of the 80s! Not any sooner. Now we take it granted. Amazing... Stop and think about it.
    • Just to give you some perspective on it: my grandmother bought her Motorola color TV (27") in 1697. My brother *still* uses it, working fine. ISTR color was introduced about 1955 (my uncle worked for a RCA repair shop).

      Getting back on topic, the Xerox copier went through the same thing in the '70's, I remember actually seeing authors and publishers picket against the machines at K-Mart.

    • Like colour television, people started to get those in the middle of the 80s!

      What country are you from? In the US color tv's came about in the late 60s and were commonplace in the early 70s.

      • Re:Mankind has developed _A LOT_ in 20 years! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What country are you from? In the US color tv's came about in the late 60s and were commonplace in the early 70s.

        Well, that I did not know. I'm from Finland. I guess the same goes for the rest of the Europe - I believe colour TVs were available in Europe much sooner than 1985, but I also belive that they were so expensive that common households started to get those no sooner than in the middle of 80s. Like my family and the families I knew back then. But it's really amazing. 30 years is nothing! And so m
        • I wonder why the disparity in price? By the mid-80s the big TV "feature" here was whether it was "cable-ready" or not by being able to tune in higher channels and using the F-type connector or even RCA cable inputs for really fancy models!

          I can recall seeing a full sized 28" B&W TV with wood cabinet and all at my grandparents as late as 1997 in a spare room... I think it had to been of the last produced and at least 25 years old.
      • In the US color tv's came about in the late 60s and were commonplace in the early 70s.

        Try a decade earlier - the first color TV's came out in the 50's and the last B&W prime-time programs were in the 1965-66 season.

      • Re:Mankind has developed _A LOT_ in 20 years! (Score:5, Informative)

        by JimBobJoe ( 2758 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @03:08AM (#8012370)
        What country are you from? In the US color tv's came about in the late 60s and were commonplace in the early 70s.

        NBC had the first color TV broadcast in 1953.

        RCA owned NBC, and was the developer of the NTSC standard. At the time (1949-52) there was actually a competing standard called the CBS color system, which was actually the one chosen by the FCC as the one to take. Long story short and lots of lawsuits later, the CBS color system was still adopted by the FCC, but that adoption was delayed until 1953.

        The CBS color system had one issue, it was not compatible with the black and white standard. If you had a black and white set, you couldn't view a CBS color program (CBS color sets displayed color with, god help us all, two spinning color disks, so if you were switching back to a black and white program, you flipped a switch on the TV that stopped the disks and moved them out of the way.)

        By 1953 there were too many people with black and white sets, and therefore no interest in spending large sums of money on a new standard. The RCA standard was backwards and forwards compatible, so it was to be the clear winner.

        Except...CBS was miffed about getting dissed, so wouldn't touch color. ABC saw no reason to make programs in color, as that would just mean more sales for RCA, which owned NBC. It wasn't until the mid 1960s that ABC relented, started broadcasting in color, and then CBS had no choice but to start broadcasting in color as well.

        The PAL european standard has 625 lines horizontal resolution, which was a new TV standard. The BBC was broadcasting black and white at 425 lines. BBC1 broadcast at 425 for many years, but BBC 2 broadcast at 625 lines color for many years, way before BBC 1 made the switchover. If you had an older TV, you needed a converter to see BBC 2. A newer TV had a switch to go back and forth. (Obviously BBC 2 had more expensive equipment, which explans the oddity of British TV licensing, which is considerably more expensive for a color TV than a black and white one.)
        PAL wasn't developed until the mid 1960's, and the fact that it was a new standard, plus the expense, made its adoption much slower than that of NTSC in North America. (I think BBC1 switched over to color 625 in 1981, so saying that most peeps had color TV's in Britain in the mid 1980's in not all that far off the mark.)

    • No it hasn't: we're still blowing the shit out of things for personal gain (won't mention names) and we're still dying of basic diseases related to supply of good food and water and though some technology has moved on we're still burning a lot of dead dinosaurs to get from A-B.

      We're still 3 meals away from a systemic collapse of civilisation. You just have to look at how people handle vacation weekends in stocking up on food and watching supermarkets get depleted on the slightest inclination of a supply

  • The decision in courts made sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheAntiCrust ( 620345 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:23PM (#8009843)
    The article said that the supreme court decided people video-taping TV at home was not the same as people downloading from the internet, and I agree with this. Although I think downloading music is a bad thing, it is quite different from video-taping a TV show. Since the TV was pretty much the only means of watching the TV show, if you wanted to watch it at any other time it was impossible. You couldnt go to a store and buy your favorite TV show. However, music is not confined to the radio only. There have been records for a long time, tapes, and now CDs are all over the place. So the argument that you just wanted a more convienent time is bullshit and was a dumb thing to argue.

    My two cents: they should have argued that it was boosting sales and that the music industry should just be happy and not shoot itself in the foot.
    • Are you saying that people should no longer be able to record television using a PVR because now you can buy many shows on DVD?
    • The 80's and 90's were the Blockbuster generation. Everyone had a VCR. An entire industry was born because of ubiquitous video players. Films no longer died the day the left the theaters, they could live again on the movie shelf. All of this is because of recordable video tape, and the devices which could use it. The installed base of millions of players was required for a viable industry, which never would have materialized if not for the ability to record and re-watch television broadcasts. Again and agai

  • I remember this. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:24PM (#8009845) Homepage Journal
    It was the end of TV. No more money from re-runs.
    Woldn't ba able to sell or rent video tapes cause they all be copied.

    heh.

  • Amusing Jack Valenti quote: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Freston Youseff ( 628628 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:27PM (#8009868) Homepage Journal
    'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone'.

  • Oh the Irony (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:30PM (#8009892)
    20 years since the decision to give people the right to record tv shows, and we're now in a time when our civil rights to record things are at an all time low.. Never bring a camera to a concert, might as well forget using your awesome Tivo when HiDef tv comes along (DRM tv.. what a great station), MP3's.. pleease, you can get fined out the ass for those.. Face it, the Courts need to use this case as a Precendent and not just completely ignore it. Knowledge and entertainment is begging us to free it... it's the people who are greedy who holds it back.

    • Re:Oh the Irony (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ex-songwriter ( 692597 )
      Who is more greedy? 1.) People who work to produce music, movies, etc., then want to get paid for the time, effort, and money they invested. Or, 2.) People who want to take the fruits of that labor without paying for it. I would argue that group 2 are the greedy ones. And by the way, the work I produce is not begging you to free it. It's asking you to buy it.

      • Re:Oh the Irony (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rollingcalf ( 605357 )
        "Who is more greedy? 1.) People who work to produce music, movies, etc., then want to get paid for the time, effort, and money they invested. Or, 2.) People who want to take the fruits of that labor without paying for it. I would argue that group 2 are the greedy ones. And by the way, the work I produce is not begging you to free it. It's asking you to buy it."

        It's asking us to buy it with all sorts of restrictions, inconveniences, and hindrances which interfere with the enjoyment of the media and which p

  • Ancillary, but interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cleetus ( 123553 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:30PM (#8009894) Homepage
    The professor [bu.edu] under whom I am writing my certification paper at law school wrote a seminal paper on fair use which was cited by the court in the sony opinion.

    She made an economic argument in favor of fair use, basically outlining a test to determine, in general terms, where an economic perspective would favor (and disfavor) findings of 'fair use.' [copyright.gov]

    As the 'law and economics' [findlaw.com] movement was just catching on amongst judges at the time, the paper gained a lot of notice and was cited by the court, and by many many other lower courts as well when issuing opinions dealing with fair use.

    A problem arose from all this citation however, because judges lost sight of other, perfectly valid justifications for 'fair use.' An exclusively economic approach to these determinations is a perspective that largely works to the detriment of artists, writers and other creative types who make valid fair use of other copyrighted works because the conditions for permitting fair use in this analysis are few and far between. (A look at Professor Gordon's work [bu.edu] will show that she is not at all happy with the current state of copyright.)

    Nonetheless, the Sony Betamax case is an important one, one that was decided correctly by a court that at the time actually viewed copyright (properly I might add) as a constitutionally mandated balancing between the progress of arts and sciences and remuneration for authors for that progress.

    On that note, support the EFF [eff.org] and VOTE!

    cleetus

    • Re:Ancillary, but interesting... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:43PM (#8009980) Homepage Journal
      One thing that people forget about is that the legal limit for personal time shifting is seven days unless you have written permission from the TV station. After that, you are technically supposed to blank the tape.

      So really, just about every American breaks this judicial law. According to a broadcast major I knew, some people do get charged with this, but often it is simply an add-on to other charges to worse stuff prosecutors think might not stick.
      • Good point. It's worth noting that having most of your customers breaking the law is actually very useful for the studios/networks/MPAA/RIAA - it allows them much greater flexibility in pursuing people they don't like (think DeCSS). So the poster suggesting 'it doesn't matter because people do it anyway' is missing the point: in the current environment, if you can be pegged as a criminal, anything done by the law becomes pretty much justified.

  • Generations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by damacer ( 713360 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:31PM (#8009899)
    It's funny that alot of people in my parent's generation think nothing of video taping a television/cable program. By doing so, they are getting a personal copy of some movie or tv series, e.g. regularly video taping 'friends'. On average, if they wanted to buy a copy of such programs it would set them back $15-$20. And, technically, RIAA-ish arguments could be made that X-million dollars are being lost each year due do such video taping.

    However, they generally seem to think that there is nothing wrong with video taping these programs. And, presumably many would argue that X-million dollars are not being lost, since they would probably not but the programs they tape. But, at the same time, many of these same people have serious issues with people downloading mp3s. They look at it as theft plain and simple. Further, they believe arguments that Y-million dollars are being lost due to these downloads. Anyhow, I kinda find the double standard both interesting and somewhat annoying/frustrating.

    • Re:Generations (Score:3, Informative)

      by ex-songwriter ( 692597 )
      Well, first of all, when this decision was handed down, those TV programs were not available for sale. The machines were taping BROADCASTS. Broadcasts (and production) that had been paid for by advertising contained therein. Then, as now, you could tape (or digitally record) a broadcast of say, a radio show, for your own personal use, and not raise the ire of the RIAA. Downloading MP3s from a complete stranger via P2P is a little different. The music is in most cases available for sale, and you are download
    • For one, the tapers likely aren't distributing copies ad nausium. And they are still watching or at least still see the ads, even on fast forward, so the intended revenue stream is still at least marginally functioning.

      Another thing is that the Supreme Court ruling used available data at the time to see that people were taping for time convenience and generally to tape over them again, and not library building. I doubt that the MP3 downloaders aren't library building, particularly with the boasts of how
    • ...they believe arguments that Y-million dollars are being lost...

      Gratuitous, almost-relevant Homer Simpson quote:

      "Woo hoo! 350 dollars! Now I can buy 70 transcripts of Nightline!"

  • Our buddy Jack Valenti (Score:5, Funny)

    by Complicity ( 30481 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:34PM (#8009919)
    And to this day, not a single American film producer, indeed no one at all, has been murdered by a VCR, ala the Boston Strangler.

    If you're not familiar with the quote...

    "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." - Jack Valenti [cryptome.org]

  • the real find (Score:3, Funny)

    by ir0b0t ( 727703 ) * <mjewell@opTOKYOenmissoula.org minus city> on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:34PM (#8009925) Homepage Journal
    its amazing just to see Rehnquist and Burger failing to agree on something.

  • HDTV (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AndruUK ( 578299 )
    Is it possible to record HDTV at the moment? Presumably it would be easy to set up a system with a DVD writer and hardware compression to do this. (Being in Europe I have no experience of using HDTV.)
  • It's the same every time. Xerox machines produced significant legal issues; I believe were the first major threat to copyrighted materials. Since then we've gotten casette tapes, VCRs, ROMs, and p2p filesharing. Do you see RIAA trying to shut down Sony for making blank casette tapes? No, because that issue was lost a long time ago. It's only the forefront of innovation which gets attacked.
    • That's just plain worrying - and not all that surprising. Broadcasters want to overturn the Betamax ruling, and are actively pressing for it? Oh yes. And in other news, their dream scenario is pay-per-view - for *every single thing* you watch.

      And along comes the broadcast flag. Let's see - analogue switch-off within the next decade so you *have* to go digital? All new consumer recording hardware must accept the broadcast flag and other DRM within, what, the next five years? No requirements at all on broad

  • Satellite dish illegal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AchmedHabib ( 696882 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:46PM (#8009997)
    At one time, it was illegal to privately own and take down channels with a satellite dish here(nothern europe). Because it was only the national(goverment owned) telegraph and broadcasting who was allowed to do that which ment you were forced to buy into the national cable system(where available)
    Of couse that didn't stop companies from selling dishes and renting out decoders for movie channels etc. And it didn't stop me from buying one and installing it.
    The law was later removed.
    • Please be more specific, because I bet you are WRONG. You are mixing up proposed laws from a few crazy politicians, and basically saying that these were the laws at the time.

      So: which northern european country are you talking about?

  • Sony decision important for free use of tools (Score:5, Informative)

    by belmolis ( 702863 ) <billposer@@@alum...mit...edu> on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:53PM (#8010040) Homepage

    The importance of this decision doesn't lie only in its liberal approach to fair use. It is also important because it acknowledges that even a device that can, or even is, used in an infringing way should be permitted if it also has non-infringing uses. This issue comes up over and over again, e.g. in the attempt by DirectTV to treat all purchasers of smartcards as thieves. Anything from a pry-bar to a debugger CAN be used to commit a crime or violate a copyright, so the doctrine that the possibility of infringing use doesn't justify prohibition or restriction is important for civil liberties in general.

  • Ah, 1984... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fortunato_NC ( 736786 ) <verlinh75.msn@com> on Saturday January 17, 2004 @05:59PM (#8010076) Homepage Journal
    Back when music video characters were cartoons, then they were real people, then they were cartoons again.

    Also, back when Columbia Pictures was "A Coca-Cola Company". The Sony of today (that owns what was Columbia) is probably kicking themselves over this bit of history. On the other hand, though, VCRs and TiVo haven't seemed to hurt the sales of "Mama's Family - The Complete Nth Season" DVD sets that pack two full rows over at the local Best Buy.

    • Yup. (Score:2)

      by Cyno01 ( 573917 )
      Aside from region coding and encryption, which aren't really issues anymore, the industry got DVDs right. People will pay a reasonable price for high quality and special features as opposed to downloading or taping it.

  • I said it first... (Score:4, Funny)

    by halo8 ( 445515 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @06:17PM (#8010193)
    20 Years ago.. back when Slashdot was a BBS on Rob's Commodore Vic20

    "I For one welcome our BetaMax Overlords"
  • John Dvorak had a commentary a few years ago that I remember whenever I see this topic: People want choice! That is why there were 45RPMs in the fifties and sixties. Why buy a whole album, when all you wanted was one or two songs. The industry wants $15 for thirteen bad songs, and the one you want - They won't learn:^(

  • UK law (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @06:43PM (#8010380) Journal
    The Guardian article suggests that UK law was influenced by US law in this matter. However, key aspects of the legal status of home recording dates back to a 1970's case where a studio sued the comedian Bob Monkhouse for copyright infringement after they discovered that he showed some of his extensive collection of films to friends.

    While it did not legalise time-shifting per-se, it did establish that individuals were entitled to hold and use media for personal use without permission from the copyright holder.

  • Thanks for the URL (Score:4, Funny)

    by Random BedHead Ed ( 602081 ) on Saturday January 17, 2004 @07:26PM (#8010612) Homepage Journal

    Thanks for providing a link to The Supreme Court [supremecourtus.gov]. Now I can visit its site to find out what it is. Good thing posters on on Slashdot [slashdot.org] privide hyperlinks [webopedia.com] to every page on the World Wide Web [boutell.com] that they reference [reference.com]. Otherwise we'd all be confused idiots [sco.com].

    Well, there it is - my first rudely sarcastic post.

    • Re:Thanks for the URL (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jemnery ( 562697 )
      I submitted the article, so no problem ;-) I live in the UK, and would probably never have visited the Supreme Court website otherwise. Posting a hyperlink was not intended to be an insult to intelligence, but rather an easy way for the curious to research further without a Google search.

  • Too bad it couldn't save Napster . . . (Score:3, Interesting)

    by werdna ( 39029 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @12:40PM (#8013902) Journal
    I very much like the rhetoric of calling Sony "the Home Taping Decision," and will probably adopt that in the future, but it is important to focus on what the case was ultimately about -- it does not bless home taping, just time-shifting, and not in ever case either.

    The case was about this: whether Sony is liable to the studios for manufacturing and selling the Betamax, when consumers (allegely more than 50% were) can use the machine to engage in copyright infringtement. The question wasn't whether some users were infringing (there was evidence undisputed by Sony that they were), but rather whether Sony should be able to sell the machine to the "good apples," without liability. Betamaxes don't infringe, people do!

    The Supreme Court set up a rule: the seller of a mechanism that can be used to infringe is not contribution if the mechanism is even capable of a substantial non-infringing use. The question isn't 'how things were used," but how it was possible to use them. Thus, the Court considered, if there exists the possibility of a substantial noninfringing use, the studios lose.

    So how can you use a VCR that's non-infringing? The Court considered the practice of 'time-shifting," that is, setting the machine to record something at one time, to be viewed at another time.

    THAT WAS THE ONLY PRACTICE OF CONSUMERS THAT WAS DISCUSSED.

    At any rate, the Supes found time shifting, as they described it, to be fair use. Fair use is not infringing, and so Sony was free to own the Betamax market. (Talk about Phyrric victory!)

    So the case was, indeed, a landmark for technology regulation using the copyright act, but it really was limited in terms of what it said about home recording. The only conduct blessed was, essentially, recording the news to play it back later. Left unaddressed was recording a tape for an archival library to be played more than once, making a tape of another's for home use, and so forth.

    For the longest time, solid IP lawyers thought that Sony would dispose unceremoniously of the RIAA's claims in Napster. (Ironically, Sony was a co-plaintiff in Napster!). Alas, the 9th Circuit (the same 9th circuit reversed for its "substantial infringing uses" test in Sony) didn't see it that way. Even more alas, Napster didn't survive to appeal the Circuit court opinion to the Supreme Court.

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