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.

Comments

What a significant legal win...

[mao che minh]

...that the FCC could find a way to overturn in the blink of an eye. We should remain vigilant about this.

PVRs and advertising

[AndruUK]

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?

Re:PVRs and advertising

[Naffer]

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.

Re:PVRs and advertising

[HawkPilot]

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 DVD players won't skip the commercials and the FBI warnings if the disc creator instructs the player not too.

I've heard talk of restricting HDTV signals, because some consider it stealing.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if commercials change their format on TV. Can you imagine pop-ups like on VH1's Pop-up-videos or banner ads like the current stock tickers?

Re:PVRs and advertising

[AeroIllini]

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. If I am going to pay for a service, I don't want advertising cluttering it up.

Re:PVRs and advertising

[Stray7Xi]

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.

MPAA & RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

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

*sighs*

[extra the woos]

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*

[geekoid]

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.

And yet...

[NowboyKeel]

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

The decision in courts made sense

[TheAntiCrust]

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.

Re:The decision in courts made sense

[Naffer]

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?

I remember this.

[geekoid]

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.

Re:I remember this.

[Tim C]

Precisely his point.

Was it really a good thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Oh the Irony

[ciroknight]

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

[rollingcalf]

"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 pirates don't have to suffer. It is greedy to expect people to pay more and get less.

Huh?

[Kjella]

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

Re:Huh?

[Skavookie]

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.

Satellite dish illegal

[AchmedHabib]

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.

Re:Probably wouldn't matter if they did.

[Anonymous Coward]

The practical significance of that is precisely zero

Untill you piss someone off who is in a position of power.

How about linking commercials?

[Jetson]

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....

Re:How about linking commercials?

[AeroIllini]

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 by advertising firms.

Re:Generations

[geekoid]

Not any real difference between taping a tv program and downloading an mp3. However, illegally distributing copyrighted works is a different matter.

UK law

[91degrees]

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.

Re:You still watch/tape TV?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I can understand considering the content unfit for recording. Myself, I don't watch more than a smattering "network" tv anymore. Reality TV? No thanks, I see how shitty people are to each other every day, I don't need to watch people get paid to act that way.

I do like some content though. I prefer to watch it when I want. That's why I use a PVR. One of the odd things that I use my ReplayTV for is to snag every fishing show that runs (that doesn't conflict with Enterprise or some other show that I watch) and spool it up in case I want to see it. I recently took up fishing again, and that's useful to me.

Gotta differ on one thing, though...

2) How many times are you really gonna watch something? Online services will archive their offerings - Pay for Play.

I'm not interested in Pay for Play, particularly when it is going to involve DRM that won't be compatible with my OS of choice. I'd rather archive the content that I want myself, and watch it when I want. If it becomes available on DVD (at a reasonable price, never mind this $25 for a 1 hour History Channel show) then I'll buy it and clear some space in the spool. even if I only watch it one more time, it's more efficient for me to spool it myself than pay the cable company even MORE money to access it later.

Yea some people will say that's contrary to "fair use". As long as I'm not selling it, I don't really care. Offer it to me at a reasonable price, for a ONE TIME PURCHASE, where I can watch it whenever I want from then on, and I'll buy.

Main reason I won't "Kill my tv" though is that I need it for a display for my game consoles :).

Re:Thanks for the URL

[jemnery]

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.