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> we had to store 11 million copies on disc The reason you were allowed to store 11 million copies is because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled[1] in 1984 that you

> we had to store 11 million copies on disc The reason you were allowed to store 11 million copies is because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled[1] in 1984 that you were permitted to make copies of TV shows to watch later on your VCR. And this was reputedly because some of the supreme court judges had VCRs — which had been spreading lightning fast at the time — and understood the concept and wanted to find or create a legal argument to permit such copying. Just imagine if VCR adoption had been slower, and that the judges had not yet tried out that newfangled invention for home recording, and they had ruled that personal copies weren't allowed. Then today, you'd have been making 11 million illegal copies. It's amusing to think about whether making a single copy available to 11 million users would have been much less legal risk in that scenario. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive....

raynr 4y ago
To be more specific, the Betamax case is the reason a specific person can store a copy of a TV recording that they made, for timeshifting purposes, because SCOTUS held that that person's use of the recorded TV content, in that circumstance, was fair dealing with respect to the recorded TV content. And that's it. If you provide a recording service, you had better be as close as you possibly can to that fact matrix. Any hint that it's you, and not your users, who are doing the copying, would attract the wolves. Also, this focus on who is doing the copying has been looked at enough in different jurisdictions around the world that it's probably not worth the risk testing it. Germany (Save.TV, Shift.TV), Japan (Rokuraku II), Australia (Optus TV Now). Don't quote me on these, this is off the cuff.

raynr 4y ago

To be more specific, the Betamax case is the reason a specific person can store a copy of a TV recording that they made, for timeshifting purposes, because SCOTUS held that that person's use of the recorded TV content, in that circumstance, was fair dealing with respect to the recorded TV content. And that's it. If you provide a recording service, you had better be as close as you possibly can to that fact matrix. Any hint that it's you, and not your users, who are doing the copying, would attract the wolves. Also, this focus on who is doing the copying has been looked at enough in different jurisdictions around the world that it's probably not worth the risk testing it. Germany (Save.TV, Shift.TV), Japan (Rokuraku II), Australia (Optus TV Now). Don't quote me on these, this is off the cuff.