Your Right to Record Movies Off TV Came 30 Years Ago

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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If you are one of the millions that have in the past or still record copyrighted material, you should be aware of the background story of how that privilege came to be. The US Supreme Court reached a decision on January 17th, 1984 giving citizens the right to record copyrighted material, in this case it was Sony’s new Betamax technology that brought all of this about.

In the years since the ruling, it's been notoriously hard to figure out how home consumption of copyrighted work has impacted the entertainment industry. The rise of the VCR let Hollywood make more money on home videos than it ever could at box offices.
 
Weren't some of the arguments used in "taping from the radio" and the Betamax case that the copies were not identical to the original and multiple copies would each reduce quality?
 
If you are one of the millions that have in the past or still record copyrighted material, you should be aware of the background story of how that privilege came to be. The US Supreme Court reached a decision on January 17th, 1984 giving citizens the right to record copyrighted material, in this case it was Sony’s new Betamax technology that brought all of this about.

It's not a privilege if it's a right, dumb-dumb.
 
The difference back then is you were not making a perfect copy of the original. Today you can.
 
The difference back then is you were not making a perfect copy of the original. Today you can.
There is also a bit of ease of copying also revenue sources from radio and tv still got credit when doing such copying as it required the users to copy the source materials themselves. It also didn't account for someone being able to copy one thing and give that away for free to 100+ people easily.
 
It also didn't account for someone being able to copy one thing and give that away for free to 100+ people easily.

Did they mention that as part of the right? If not, then it's fair game til said otherwise. Anyway, debating about it is useless, government is in the pockets of these people, so whatever they want basically goes.
 
I actually do believe it was that you could record content aired on tv for private use. Which is what your dvr does now and is how it gets around any copyright issues.
 
Back then recording quality from the TV or radio was crap.
Tape to tape was better, but still not as good as the original.
Originals degraded both over time and with use, plus the tape broke or folded and jammed sending endless streams of tape out that you prayed you could wind back in with a pencil, so making backups to play in the car or on that old VHS/ Betamax players was perfectly reasonable.
Copies of something made it about as far as a family member or friend. Blank tapes at the time cost almost as much as the original, so you didn't just pass them out.
The MP3 and AVI along with the internet and Napster and Morpheus changed all that forever.
 
I actually do believe it was that you could record content aired on tv for private use. Which is what your dvr does now and is how it gets around any copyright issues.

There's a new streaming record service that is using this ruling. It allows you to record any streamed content. The kciker is, you have to record it - meaning you can't just download the stream. It has to be a capture of it.

Apparently it works well, as they advertise it at airports for travelers to watch Hulu/Netflix on the plane.
 
I actually do believe it was that you could record content aired on tv for private use. Which is what your dvr does now and is how it gets around any copyright issues.
Yup which is why capturing what's on your tv and recorded it on the computer is of the same legality. It's the distribution that is iffy.
 
There's a new streaming record service that is using this ruling. It allows you to record any streamed content. The kciker is, you have to record it - meaning you can't just download the stream. It has to be a capture of it.

Apparently it works well, as they advertise it at airports for travelers to watch Hulu/Netflix on the plane.

Never seen that, guess I really don't look at signs at the airport I guess. Would that happen to be play on? Think that branch of their service is called play later. Play on let's you stream from your computer to any other device, I then noticed they came out with a new service where you can capture youtube, Netflix and so on to watch when you don't have a connection
 
Never seen that, guess I really don't look at signs at the airport I guess. Would that happen to be play on? Think that branch of their service is called play later. Play on let's you stream from your computer to any other device, I then noticed they came out with a new service where you can capture youtube, Netflix and so on to watch when you don't have a connection

Yeah, it's PlayLater. They've added a ton of supported streaming services like Amazon and the major networks.
 
This is funny being I have been recording all kinds of data for the last 15 years and never gave a dam what anyone told me was legal or illegal :)
 
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