![]() In 1982, testifying in front of Congress before the Supreme Court had ruled, MPAA President Jack Valenti said, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. Movie studios protect their DVDs against copying, and so all the software that breaks through this protection is illegal to distribute in the United States. There's another law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which makes it illegal to break through any antipiracy protections put on digital media. ![]() Home copying is legal, but entertainment companies aren't required to let you do it. OK, but why isn't DVD-copying software legal? since recording a TV programme to watch it later, known as 'time-shifting,' was deemed to be a fair use. But Sony won that case because the machine had significant non-infringing uses. SLO-340 (1977): New 03.01.31 First portable Betamax, weighing in at 20 pounds this was truly a massive deck. Sony had been accused of infringing TV and movie studios' copyrights. ![]() Record labels have said that "ripping" a CD to MP3 files, or burning a few copies, as long as they're for personal use, is OK. This followed a 1984 Supreme Court decision on Sony's Betamax video recorder. Their actions potentially have an effect on the market for music or videos in a way that recording a TV show and watching it later does not. People who are uploading music though peer-to-peer networks aren't viewed as doing it for personal use. If copying at home is OK, why are people being sued for file-swapping? In the Betamax case, the Court found that time-shifting (i.e., taping a program for later viewing at a more convenient time) is a fair use, and that there was no evidence that Sony had encouraged infringing videotaping or had taken active steps to increase its profits from unlawful taping.
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