Back when we would record onto VHS, is that considered piracy? Found a super bowl XXXI tape from my Uncle circa 1997. I’m curious lol.
Also side note, have any of you dabbled in digitizing old VHS? Have quite a few home videos on VHS and I’m wanting to preserve them for the future. I’ve done a bit of research and have come across a wide array of information. I know that doesn’t really qualify as piracy, if there’s a better comm for this, please direct me there!
The VCR was invented, marketed, and sold to do this very thing. When the VCR first came out (same for betamax) they didn’t sell pre-recorded tapes because the only way they had to make those was to manually record them individually in real-time which was prohibitively expensive. That’s also why movie rental places caught on: early VHS movies were too expensive for most to afford. But not too expensive for a business to rent hundreds of times.
Suffice to say: if recording TV was piracy, it wasn’t illegal and the people bitching had no way to enforce their will.
Only if you sold it. Back when cassette tapes first came out, the
mysticmusic industry sued, and the Supreme Court ruled it fair use. So VHS tapes were under the same umbrella. We wouldn’t get that same ruling now.Holy hell, that was one hell of an autocorrect on mobile.
Everything that gives people non-gatekept access to any media is considered “piracy” by the powers that be.
That propaganda image is from the 80s.
Re: NFL
Which is weird because neither of those things are illegal. You can absolutely tape the radio. You just can’t distribute it. Just like you can copy your own media for your own use as much as you want.
True, but that doesn’t stop them from being propagandized as “piracy”.
Remember, no business is required to tell the truth. Had a pipeline go through my backyard and you would not believe the lies that company told. Glad I lawyered up instead of believing the lies.
In 1984, this issue made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ultimately decided that recording television to tape using a VCR for personal use (“timeshifting”) is fair use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.
For personal use, so not for distribution and a copy made on your own, not procured from someone else, right?
The Wikipedia article has these relevant quotes from the court opinion:
The question is thus whether the Betamax is capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses … one potential use of the Betamax plainly satisfies this standard, however it is understood: private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home.[7] […] [W]hen one considers the nature of a televised copyrighted audiovisual work… and that time-shifting merely enables a viewer to see such a work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge, the fact… that the entire work is reproduced… does not have its ordinary effect of militating against a finding of fair use.[8]
So yeah, private, non commercial, in the home, for content you would have otherwise been able to see for yourself in the past by the “regular” means available to you.
Which is vastly different from going on the internet and downloading a movie with your favorite torrent program when you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to see it…
Came here to say “Time shifting”.
To the top with you! I see some opinions quoted, but yours is the right answer.
