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I don't usually get involved in inter-corporate struggles, but the out come of a lawsuit in process may have such radical consequences in regard to the right to home entertainment that I think every one of our readers should be aware of the issues. MCA, partner of Philips in a well -publicized videodisc system (I wrote about it extensively myself in our December 1973 issue), is suing Sony to prevent the latter from manufacturing and marketing its Betamax video tape system.
While I have no solid evidence from which to infer that any part of the impetus for the lawsuit is MCA/Philips' inability to get its product onto the market, whereas Sony's is already there, I cannot dismiss my suspicion that the video disc company merely wants to thwart the video tape company's capture of a potentially enormous home entertainment market. For all the advantages the MCA/Philips system has over the Sony--not the least of which is the lower cost of both its hard ware and its software--the Betamax can claim at least one: It can record. You can watch one television show while taping another for later viewing; you can set a timer to record a show while you are out.
You con, but whether you may is an open question. MCA (and its partner in the suit, Walt Disney Productions) has claimed copyright infringement; the entertainment conglomerate' counts among its proper ties the movies of its subsidiary Universal City Studios. In its sym biotic partnership with Philips, MCA supplies the program material while Philips makes the players. (As we reported last November, Sony has now teamed up with Paramount.) Movie companies, of course, have a stake in discouraging you from taping their films from The Late Show for your personal library. What would happen to the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz if enough people made their own copies? What would be the future of those intermittent re-releases of Gone with the Wind if enough viewers had taped its recent telecast? If Betamaxes proliferate, would MCA have to turn a deaf ear and reject any multimillion-dollar offers the networks make to televise its Jaws? Clearly, the traditional distribution patterns for making films available to the public would have to be rethought.
It is, to be sure, generally illegal to make an unauthorized copy of somebody else's copyrighted material. (The 1972 Sound Recording Act specifically exempts the home audio tapist who records anything for his own use. Thus, strangely, you can tape the soundtrack of a TV pro gram-but don't get caught recording what's on the screen.) Since MCA cannot hope to sue every homebody with a video recorder, company executives have decided to attack the subversive technology.
There is a basic difference between the recording of visual material and the recording of sound. If you have a few dollars, you can walk into a neighborhood store and buy the music from Godspell; you can not do the same for the movie. With the one, you buy the product; with the other, you (or the network) buy a single showing. These are the conditions the economics of the two industries have dictated.
But now a new industry is developing, an industry whose economics are conflicting with those of a long-established one. And in the process the older industry, rather than planning for changes in its distribution patterns to meet the development of technology, is trying to limit our ability to do what we want within the confines of our homes. When it does appear, an MCA disc should be cheaper than even the blank tape necessary to record the same length of program material via Betamax, if you plan to keep the program rather than re-use the tape.
Which only goes to reinforce my suspicion that the entertainment giant, not yet able to market its own wares, is trying to quash the com petition, and the public interest be damned.
If MCA wins the suit, watch out, Xerox!
by Leonard Marcus (HF magazine, editor)
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(High Fidelity, Apr. 1977)
Also see:
Recordings Before Edison; Leonard Marcus; Unearthing a surprising abundance