For those of you who have been following this privacy / fair use issue, Ive been saying this all along and that RIAA will not win this one (ever), which is at the core of it all. This is really big and this is why;
The Inquirer
The judge held that the "noncommercial home use recording of material broadcast over the public airwaves was a fair use of copyrighted works and did not constitute copyright infringement, and that petitioners could not be held liable as contributory infringers even if the home use of a VTR was considered an infringing use.
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Material over public airwaves means everything that has ever played on Radio, TV, Satellite ect.
Petitioners means that anyone who provides the means of duplicating non-infringing devices, like ISP's, peer to peer networks, VCR, CD-RW's ect. "At last we seem to have a judge who is prepared to say that liability falls on those using the web and not those providing the service" or the means.
In other words if they were to ban Grokster and Streamcast Networks for providing the means to infringe on copyright works they would also have to include Xerox, Maxtor, IBM, Sony, Kodak, Canon, HP and others for providing photocopiers, hard drives, vcr's, printer, cameras and any other manufacturer that is providing the means to reproduce something.
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If you add that with this;
According to U.S. Law
The "Fair Use" doctrine to US Copyright Law is a limitation to a copyright holder's rights. It allows others to use some or all of another's work under certain circumstances without the copyright holder's
approval. There are four factors used to consider whether a use made of a copyrighted work is a "Fair Use":
1 -- The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2 -- The nature of the copyrighted work;
3 -- The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4 -- The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
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Here's what all of this means. According to U.S. Law and the Fair Use doctrine, no matter what title you put to your own work, just because someone says their work is copyright doesn't mean that it can never be used, there are some provision that gives others the right to use copyright works without the copyright holders approval such as the fair use doctrine.
"The judge's mention of video recorders was particularly relevant as it refers to the principal case law of Sony Corporation of America et al. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., et al. of 1983-84"
and what this means;
Is that the U.S. Supreme Court said that the VCR (Betamax at the time) was lawful because it had a substantial non-infringing use. The real value of that decision was not so much that it just said that the VCR can record. The real value is that it handed down a broad principle. It said that any time that technology has both infringing and non-infringing applications, you don't have to look to the intent of the manufacturer. You don't have to look to the intent of someone who sells this product. All you have to do is examine whether or not there are substantial non-infringing applications.
The whole picture is that anything that is transmitted over public airwaves such as radio, TV or satellite can be recorded on a VTR (Video Tape Recorder) or in fact any technology that is able to record as long as it's for non commercial home (or private) use. What do you think is transmitted over TV, Radio and Satellite ??? Music, Movies, talk shows, news ect. nearly every song ever made, nearly every movie ever made, nearly every radio show ever made. If it has ever played on a public medium then it's open to fair use as long as it's for non commercial home/private use and that the petitioners (ISP's, peep to peer networks, cd-rw manufacturers) could not be held liable as contributory infringers.
At least there's some good news in all this.
