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20 Year Anniversary of Home Taping Decision
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.
...that the FCC could find a way to overturn in the blink of an eye. We should remain vigilant about this.
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?
The horse has bolted. To this day home recording is still a copyright violation in Australia. The practical significance of that is precisely zero.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Too damn bad he was totally wrong - we would have been spared the Star Wars prequels...
which would be overturned in an instant if the MPPA and RIAA get their way
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)
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
No, they didn't steal your betamax....it broke and there was nothing else to replace it with. ;)
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
I'm not (legally) able to record my favorite songs from a streaming radio station for "listening at a later time."
if home taping is legal p2p should be legal too!!
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
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.
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.
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
'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'.
Yippee, we can tape crap. Now we can Tivo it. The net effect is Japanese electronics giants have gotten rich and soon we'll all be paying subscription fees to watch drek like Friends (soon to be cluttered with product placements) and Hollywood will run out of money for risky (read:quality) programming.
Ban it. Except for porn.
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.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
The professor 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.'
As the 'law and economics' 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 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 and VOTE!
cleetus
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.
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
- c -
its amazing just to see Rehnquist and Burger failing to agree on something.
I'm laughing at clouds.
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.)
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 commercials. Why? Because that's what's most profitable for both groups. Sorry folks, PVR != no more commericials. Not for very long anyways.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
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...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I sent an e-mail to correct the author.
Just got a new 20 GB model yesterday. It's incredible.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
U.S. corroborating with WIPO to overturn Betamax decision and also eliminate public domain
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.
...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.
Carthago delenda est!
Press SELECT-PLAY-SLECT-3-0-SELECT, now the advance button is a 30 second skip button.
I like to build things and wire stuff together.
With VHS and related products, Sony amongst others gave millions a chance to record quality 80's broadcasts with 250 line analogue machines, with the progression of real time encoding into Mpeg2+ and consumer DVD recorders, how long before the courts rule on a "comprimise" of legality over quality in a recording?
I certainly *in the UK* have the pleasure of recording terrestial broadcasts but am forbidden to record hi-def movie channels etc...
The future for recording is unclear
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.
It is with sadness that today Sony is participating in Hollywood's tirade against the very people it fought for two decades ago. I suppose it's lesson learned for consumers who still believe in the so-called goodwill of some companies. It isn't so much that we consumers are ignorant or blind-sided, we're simply too naive.
Poor, poor Hollywood... my heart and soul go out to those slimy yet wonderful bastards.
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.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
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....
it's not "who am I to tell anyone what they should like", it is "who are they to tell me I should spend money on subscribing to substandard entertainment".
That's the real issue: the fact that I'm being asked to shell out $ for crap. I didn't pay for buffy, and I won't pay for whatever insane scheme they're pushing down the pipe either.
20 Years ago.. back when Slashdot was a BBS on Rob's Commodore Vic20
"I For one welcome our BetaMax Overlords"
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Are you people nuts!?
Doesn't it force you to pay attention for 6 minutes at a time? The term "programming" will now be used in a different light. Sure, home movies are convenient, but remember how powerful big-screen movies are? Just sneak some candy and soda in with you - KILL YOUR TV!
Heck, they don't even play the Star Spangled Banner @ 5am anymore. Besides, digital projectors and DVDs will be commonplace in a few years. IMHO
Stuff that matters.
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:^(
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
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.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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.
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.
-
Thanks for providing a link to The Supreme Court. Now I can visit its site to find out what it is. Good thing posters on on Slashdot privide hyperlinks to every page on the World Wide Web that they reference. Otherwise we'd all be confused idiots.
Well, there it is - my first rudely sarcastic post.
Do you have a reference for this theory? I do see testimony in the ruling about seven days, but this was only in reference to a stations existing practices at the time. The station's practices were not even legally binding anymore after this Supreme Court ruling.
I don't see the DVD even being developed to begin with if it weren't for the home VCR.
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 again we see industry associations trying to prevent through legislation the inevitable, rather than setting the trend through sound business practice based in market research. High-quality downloadable music surfaced around 1997. Large corporations missed the boat because they were too busy trying to tell customers what they should want instead of listening to what the people wanted. It is 2004, and I want quality music on my computer now, and in my car, on my stereo, and on my walkman, and I want it to be cheap. $20 per copy of shitty music on flimsy media that I have to drive 10 miles to get, or wait for in the mail? They gotta keep up with the times. Its stupid. If you are at odds with your customers, you have to change, not your customers.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
The Hollow King
by Kevin Alfred Strom
American Dissident Voices Broadcast of January 17, 2004
Martin Luther King was no hero. His multiracialist movement was intended to do exactly what it did: destroy the fabric of White America. We who are the survivors of the multiracialist experiment forced on us by King's handlers -- and many have died because of it -- must do everything we can so that White children are still being born in the future.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. 'Martin Luther King, Jr.' was a sexual degenerate, a liar, a plagiarist, a phony reverend, a phony Christian, an imposter, a criminal, a Communist functionary, an enemy of America, a traitor to even his own people, and a willing pawn in the Jewish establishment's plan to reduce America from a great White nation to a Third World feeding and breeding zone, a province in the Global Plantation of the billionaire Jewish elite. King played on the sentiments and emotions of his White victims, using our gullibility and our hypertrophic sense of fairness and kindness to get the noose around our necks and attempt to kill the one race which exemplifies civility, kindness, empathy, and fairness more than any other. He cynically used our virtues against us -- though he can't get all the credit for the scheme, since his behind-the-scenes handler and speechwriter was Jewish Communist Stanley Levison. Levison and his ilk also represented a very powerful -- in fact, ruling -- faction within the United States government. Besides an attempt to kill our uniquely beautiful and creative race, I think it is quite likely that his handlers eventually decided to kill King, too. King alive, with his increasingly degenerate behavior and with mounting evidence of his Communist and anti-American connections, was becoming an increasing liability to the overall program. But, like John Kennedy, as a dead 'saint' he could cause no embarrassment, and his posthumous halo would act as a force field to ward off critical investigators, while his image and his 'martyrdom' would advance the multiracialist cause more than ever. http://www.mobilization2-21.com/mlk.htm
It was ten years ago this week that I first launched an expose on this radio program of that Communist functionary and 'saint' of multiracialism, the man called 'Martin Luther King. Jr.' I was not the first to expose this fraud, liar, and swindler, but at this ten-year juncture it's good to look back and see where we stand on the issue-truth-tellers versus liars, King worshippers versus realists. I'd have to concede that, so far, it's a draw. The battle between the myth-makers and the muckrakers is still on -- stronger than ever, in fact. http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=1687
The supine nature of the politicians who institute holidays and piously invoke the name of this enemy of America and traitor to his own people as some kind of saint or exemplar hasn't changed in ten years, of course. The Jewish-dominated media still determine the election results, so virtually all politicians bow down to whomever the media Jews indicate, and they've still got their blood-soaked fingers pointing at St. Martin the Black. The public schools are still run by the National Education Association and the teachers' colleges are still firmly in the hands of those who push the multiracialist agenda, so our children in public (and usually also in private) schools are still indoctrinated to worship King. As National Vanguard writer Steven Smith recently put it:
As we approach the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., our nation's schools will use this opportunity to fill White children's minds with pro-diversity and anti-White propaganda. One of the most widely used propaganda tools is a mostly-animated 60 minute video called "My Friend Martin," produced by Jews. It is a certainty that most children enrolled in the United States public school system will be forced to watch this video -- followed by Communist-style 'encounter' sess
true, but eho are you to tell someone else what they should like?
I think Buffy was shitty tv, but apparently, I was in the minority.
Nice of you to acknowledge the "majority" of us. Actually, most people think Buffy the Vampire Slayer is crap without even watching it. My labmate went so far as to declare that it couldn't possibly be good with a title like that. At least you're willing to label it a matter of personal taste.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I was too young to remember the details, but I do recall for certain that our local movie theater sponsored a petition drive to outlaw cable TV in the early 60s. I can imagine this was an organized drive involving other cinemas as well.
I think BBC1 switched over to color 625 in 1981
Huh? IIRC (from reading about it), BBC2 did colour from 1967 and BBC1 started in colour in 1969.
Virtually all BBC shows from the 1970s are in colour(*), although I'm assuming that colour sets were rare at first- they were still expensive by today's standards and far from universal in the (very) early '80s. But the programs themselves were in colour long before then...
IIRC (again) the BBC supported the old 425-line B&W transmission standard (though only for the station later named BBC1, I'd guess) until *1985* or thereabouts. Maybe that's what you meant.
(*) Some Doctor Who episodes from the era had B&W copies made for foreign markets; when the originals were later wiped(!), only the mono copies remained, but the originals were colour.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
How many times are you really gonna watch something?
:)
I see your point with the fishing show. I can imagine myself doing the same thing with "This Old House", or a PBS or CBC educational series - not to mention that having every episode of the original Star Trek would be cool (except Pike).
As a relatively poor person, I tend to live by Pay To Play, perhaps that's what makes going to movies so much more enjoyable. I distance myself from the TiVo/VHS crowd also because of what I'll call a Pavlovian Relationship with content and commercials. So, there's an extra reason that others may not identify with, that keeps me from purchasing new recording formats.
Quite frankly, I've never been a fan of broadcast rule(r)s anyway. The use the natural laws of the universe to disseminate content over a 'free' medium is great. Commercials make TV work for free - fine. Do they have a right to limit my use of the natural laws of the universe to capture what they broadcast? No!!! (IMHO). If they feel they do, then they need to rethink what they're broadcsting. The opening scene from "Contact" is a clever, if not too realistic example - {Hitler's address to the Olympic Arena being the first broadcast strong enough to reach space.}. While I consider myself liberal when it comes to social mores, I think most media today stretches the limit and actually broadcasts damaging stuff on occaision. Sex and frank discussions - that's ok, but if it's only titilation - who cares. I am reminded of a commercial that showed actual death scenes when promiting it's 'wild' video for sale. A guy getting sucked up into an Air Force Jet on a runway. It freaked me right out because I was not 'prepared' for it. I think stuff like that is socially irresponsible.
I guess I wish that everything was archived so that I could intake whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. For that I would rather pay than pirate. Content providers would be able to better manage their offerings as well. If that does become the next pradigm, I hope they address musicians because a GREAT amount of cultural erosion has occured, behind this whole ownership scene. The broadcast execs and content managers are about as thorough and trustful as Enron, WorldCom. Though I may or may not have broken that law in the past to some small degree, it doesn't bother me either.
How about: Apprehend the FCC instead of KILL YOUR TV. - Does that work?
Additionally, my old games ruined my old TVs. If I could drag one out of the local landfill and plug it in, Intellivision's Sea Battle or Atari's Adventure would probably still be burned into the screen!
Stuff that matters.
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 problem to know that even 1st world nations have a very fragile balance.
We can /. faster though !
IANAL, but isn't there a part of the copyright process that says that if a person or company who owns the copyright on a thing fails to enforce it, or can be proven to only enforce it selectively, then they lose the right to enforce that copyright? Doesn't that apply here?
Wouldn't that mean that in countries like Australia and the UK, even if it is illegal to copy copyrighted works, the copyright holders have forfeited their right to enforce this because they have not been completely enforcing their own copyrights?
(Hopefully some moderator out there will notice this post...)
Have fun,
Paul
--Reason is a tool. Try to remember where you left it.--