The 1984 Betamax Decision is the "Brown vs. Board" of copyright law. (We'll get to the legendary Judy Garland soon....this is from the University of Monterey, Mexico.)
The law, under Betamax, is you have a right to tape copyrighted material for your own use.
But that result was never fully accepted by the movie industry, which continues to proceed as though the decision did not exist.
Boingboing recently illustrated this with the statements of Fritz Attaway, vice president of the MPAA. Let me warn you beforehand, what Mr. Attaway is doing here is called lying.
"There is no right in the copyright law to make backup copies of motion pictures, so the whole argument that people should have the right to make backup copies of DVDs has no legal support whatsoever," said Fritz Attaway, executive vice president of the MPAA.
"It's against consumers' interests to permit devices that make backup copies," he added, "because there is no way that a device can distinguish between a backup copy for personal use and making a copy for friends, family acquaintances or even selling on the street corner."
In fact, the Betamax case is precisely on point here because CDs and DVDs, contrary to your own assumptions on the matter, are not a stable medium. In fact, the copyright industries have been fighting copying harder-and-harder, as the media they are copied to become less-and-less reliable.
Copying is not just legitimate. It is in the public interest, and in the vital interest of the movie industry itself.
For proof look no further than the 1954 Judy Garland movie "A Star Is Born." (Told you I was getting to it.) I saw the film recently on Turner Classic Movies. The original prints were so degraded that it could only be restored by using stills in some sequences, as in the 1924 silent film "Greed." (That's a still from "Greed" above, taken from a Quebec film fan site.)
Films are being lost all the time. The acetate degrades, just as magnetic tapes degrade, and (as we now know) DVDs degrade. The "Betamax" decision isn't just the law, but it's a good idea -- good for consumers, and good for the movie industry.
Don't let them take it away.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Paul M Johnson on May 11, 2004 04:39 PM writes...
Actually it is in the interest of copyright holders to restrict your rights to make archival copies of what you have purchased. That way if your media decays or you loose the digital download file and you still want to have a copy of that material you will need to go back to the copyright holder and purchase another copy.
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