Word: homing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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VTRs are legal for home...
...videotape recorder (VTR) is the television industry's first really new product for the home consumer since color sets. The compact device can record color or black-and-white television programs, play video cassettes, accept cassettes of prerecorded commercial shows and, with use of an optional camera, produce home movies, all playable on the user's own TV set. The VTR's primary function, taping TV shows off the air, has opened a new kind of Pandora's box. In 1976 two of the biggest movie production companies filed suit, charging Sony Corp., the first firm...
...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...
Sony based its defense on the argument that copyright law permits home recording and that the "privacies of life" must be protected from government intrusion. In the 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...
...nine other companies in addition to Sony. The new Betamax now costs $1,250 ($900 at discount), but the price is likely to drop. It is an appealing gadget. Quite apart from its immediate use, taping programs the viewer might overwise miss, VTR cassettes can record for endless home reruns the occasional classic series such as Shakespeare's plays or historic news events like the saturation coverage of the Pope's visit to the U.S. And there are those vintage films that seem fated to be televised at 2:30 a.m. A well-used machine can provide...