In 1984 Universal Studios filed a law suite against Sony Corp accusing its Betamax machine of contributing to the infringement of copyright law. The US Supreme Court found in favour of Sony Corp citing that if a certain technology can be used for substantial non-copyright infringing activities then it should not be outlawed because of its potential for misuse. This ruling has had influence on today’s new media legal battles. Whilst unsuccessful, it was the primary defence in the case between music and film companies filing a joint suit against file sharing sites such as Morpheus, Kazaa, and Grokster. Lawyers failed to show a large number of legal benefits for the technologies offsetting the many problems. The Betamax Defence was also used by Lawyer David Boies when defending Napster. He too failed to prove substantial non-infringing benefits justifying the legal continuation of the technology. (Swanson, 2002)
A passage from the court’s finding states that, “Whatever the future percentage of legal versus illegal home-use recording might be, an injunction which seeks to deprive the public of the very tool or article of commerce capable of some non-infringing use would be an extremely harsh remedy, as well as one unprecedented in copyright law�. Such a finding would seem to support the case of current file-sharing technologies. However, it is in proving benefits where the problem for file-sharing software companies lies.
Daniel Fisher 10:23, 28 Oct 2004 (EST)
