Word: ferguson
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...Clyde Ferguson, chairman of the executive committee, said yesterday that he was "unaware of the visiting committee's findings. We were charged with a department and will continue to run it as such...
After a five-week trial in Los Angeles, Federal District Court Judge Warren J. Ferguson last week acquitted Betamax...
...ruled that "noncommercial home-use recording of material broadcast over the public air waves" is "fair use." The court also rejected the plaintiffs' claim that widespread use of VTRs would cause a decline in actual television viewing. Betamax owners will simply "rearrange" their viewing hours, said Judge Ferguson; they will "play their tapes when there is nothing on television they wish to see and no movie they want to attend." Moreover, the court noted, production of television programs by the plaintiffs, Universal City Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of MCA Inc., and Walt Disney Productions, "is more profitable than...
...words of the company's general counsel, Ira Gomberg, "A consumer has the right to do what he wants in his own home. If he wants to watch the 6 o'clock news at 10 o'clock, he has that right." That was Judge Ferguson's view too. "There is no way, nor should there be," he said, "for plaintiffs to limit the availability of alternatives to television viewing. Games, books, movies -even people-all divert potential viewers from the television set. It is impossible for plaintiffs or this court to isolate the diversion of Betamax...
...Judge Ferguson emphasized that he was not ruling on the use of VTRs outside the home, as in schools or corporations; their application to pay or cable TV; tape duplication or "tape-swapping, organized or informal." All these issues will eventually have to be resolved, either by other courts or Congress. A 1976 copyright law passed by Congress was partly aimed at the problems raised by such technological innovations as photocopiers and audio tape recorders, but left as many questions open as it answered. Dorothy Schrader, general counsel for the U.S. Copyright Office, points out: "If off-air taping...