Word: mca
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Taping Baretta. Not in the opinion of Universal City Studios, the movie and TV show producing arm of MCA Inc., or of Walt Disney Productions. They are suing Sony, its American subsidiary, an advertising agency, a few retail stores and one Betamax owner in a federal court in California. The complaint seeks to prevent further manufacture and sale of the Betamax, and to force impounding and destruction of Betamax tapes of programs owned by the plaintiffs. Universal, which initiated the suit and invited Disney to join, argues that taping TV shows or movies violates U.S. copyright law, even if viewers...
...financial as legal. A proliferation of Betamaxes, argues Joseph Davies, one of Universal's lawyers, "will threaten the rerun and replay market of films on TV." In other words, if hordes of Betamax owners tape Universal's American Graffiti the first time it is shown on TV, MCA might not get the price it wants for the film the second time around. Similarly, if many viewers tape their favorite Baretta segments, the show could be worth less when it is sold to syndicators. Home video-tape systems, in short, have the potential of revolutionizing the television business...
...Betamax may be the beginning of an important new industry," says Harvey Schein, president of Sony Corp. of America. "I don't think society can countenance the retrogressive step of preventing this from happening." MCA, argue the Sony people, should be gratified because the Betamax enables people to see shows they would otherwise have missed, thus enlarging the market for MCA products. Sony contends that TV video taping is no different from home taping of radio programs, which, it maintains, is legal if no commercial use is made of the recordings. Universal's Davies disagrees: "Say you have...
There may be a crucial aspect to the lawsuit that goes unmentioned in the plaintiffs' papers. MCA, with N.V. Philips, The Netherlands electronics giant, is developing a home-use video-disk-playing system that it feels could burgeon into a billion-dollar business. The MCA machine would be unable to record off the air. Says Schein: "The company that is suing us just happens to have a competing machine that only plays back prerecorded material...
Carter's populism emerged before a notably elite audience last week-the beautiful people of Hollywood. He attended a fund-raising dinner for 60 movie moguls and businessmen at the opulent mansion of Lew Wasserman, board chairman of MCA Inc., a show biz conglomerate. Later, accompanied by California's Governor Jerry Brown, Carter starred at a reception given by Actor Warren Beatty at the swank Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Waiting to play Gucci-footsie with the Georgia peanut farmer were the likes of Diana Ross, Louise Lasser, Peter Falk, Carroll O'Connor and Faye Dunaway. Responding to Beatty...