When time-shifting was at trial

On this day in 1984, after a year of deliberation, the US supreme court ruled in favour of Sony (makers of the Betamax video-recorder) and against Universal Studios and Disney, who had claimed that viewers recording television programmes were stealing copyrighted material. The counter-argument was that home-tapers were "time-shifting": rescheduling programmes through convenience rather than greed. The acceptance of that argument was decided on a 5-4 vote, meaning that if one justice had been a little crustier, television viewers might now be confined to their homes on the nights of their favourite shows.

This forgotten case (which also influenced British law) has more than incidental relevance to the current fuss over downloaded music. Not only does it show how artistic corporations instinctively react with fear and greed when new technology begins to reach the public, but the supreme court ruling was cited as precedent in the legal case brought by record companies against the Napster website, the first to offer online music for nothing.