Earliest Methods

Almost as soon as they were released cassette players, voice recorders, and VCR’s were brought to court and sued for unauthorized distribution of property (in this case other company’s music and media). Although some cases were heard out most lawsuits were turned down, on many cases due to the use of the right of Freedom of Speech. Also the inventors or marketers of such devices claimed that their devices did have real legal uses, and most were upheld in the courts. Nonetheless many of these inventions ran into many legal issues.

                Examples:       

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., (1984), also known as the "Betamax case". After Sony released the first ever camcorder, Universal sued Sony, because the devices were used to pirate copyrighted material. However, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that devices that have substantial legal uses are not illegal even if the devices are used for illegal purposese. The Court also ruled that the manufacturers of home video recording devices, cannot be liable for infringement. In essence, the Court judged that as long as there are legal uses for a device, it cannot be liable for illegal damages caused by it. This has case been the basis of many arguments for modern day file sharing programs.
-Adapted from http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/Sony%20legacy%20FLR.pdf
Accessed 11/26/06

SonicBlue's ReplayTV 4000 video recorder was released with great controversy. While the issue of whether users of ReplayTV 4000 should be able to skip over commercials as they record content is one ongoing issue in the case, another big issue is that SonicBlue's product incorporates a feature called SendShow, which allows users to e-mail video over the Internet to other ReplayTV 4000 users. Evan Cox, a partner in the San Francisco intellectual property and Internet advisory practice of the law firm Covington & Burling, had focused on the fact that the entertainment industry's 1984 lawsuit against VCR manufacturers over similar issues was thrown out by the Supreme Court. The determination was made that there were substantial non-infringing uses for VCRs. "The court ruled that as long as the device has substantial non-infringing uses and the device manufacturer has no further involvement with it after it's sold, then you can't hold them libel for copyright infringement by the users of that device," said Cox. Till this day SonicBlue is being sued and there is an effort to their product's features taken off the market.

-Adapted from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zdpcm/is_200206/ai_n9518953
Accessed 11/26/06

In this way we can see that the entertainment industry is hurt and helped by all these developments, much as it is now and will be later in the future.

Television

Another thing that brought great controversy early on was TV shows (now channels) such as MTV and VH1. These shows/channels bought the rights to certain songs or paid royalties, and then later aired them on TV where millions could enjoy them. The problem here was that the artist or music producer was not getting any money from all these millions of people who were enjoying their songs. At first these shows/channels were quickly brought to court where long trials and deliberations took place to see what would happen. They later agreed on some compromises but this dilemma has still not been fully solved to today, and continues to provide many conflicts.

Last modified: 11/26/06
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