Word: copyrighted
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...rather than simply calmly stating their grievances before Congress, which makes the copyright law, the studios dragged out their big legal guns who in turn dragged out their most twisted legal logic. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Disney and Universal--but the decision should never have been that close...
...City Studios could imagine all that and more. When Sony corporation first introduced video cassette recorders (VCR's), the same people who brought you Peter Pan and Donald Duck and his alleged "nephews" hauled Sony, four Betamax retailers, an advertising agency, and an individual Betamax owner into court for copyright infringement...
...sooner had the court spoken than the predictable outcry was raised by Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, who has spearheaded the entertainment industry's million-dollar lobbying campaign against unrestricted videotaping. Valenti questioned whether the "copyright is real or whether it is mush," and insisted that "the future of creative entertainment of the American family is what's at stake here." Producer Irwin Winkler (Rocky III, The Right Stuff) was being only slightly sarcastic when he said: "Creative people have to eat. With this decision they will make less income. They...
Representative Don Edwards of California, co-sponsor of a bill that would authorize a copyright royalty system, affirms that "the court didn't intend this decision to be the final answer." Yet Edwards admits that putting a royalty tax on one of the nation's favorite consumer toys in an election year is no politician's idea of how to keep...
Some legal scholars agree with Hollywood that technology is on fast forward while Congress and the court are in slow motion. Arthur R. Miller, a Harvard Law School professor and authority on copyright law, notes that the most recent congressional overhaul of copyright laws in 1976 "was obsolete the day it went into effect, at least in terms of technology." In 1976 there were some 50,000 VCRS in the U.S. Since then, sales have increased steadily (by 100% last year, and an expected 50% this year). By the end of the decade there will be an estimated 45 million...