Will the Sony Betamax case favor defendants?
The last Supreme Court decision that seems closely analogous to this one was Sony Corp. v. Universal Studios Inc. — which was decided in 1984. It held that sellers of VCRs were not liable for users’ copyright infringement — rejecting the claim that selling VCRs amounted to contributory infringement. That holding, at first glance, sounds pretty good for the defendants in the MGM v. Grokster case: Like VCR makers, they, too, provide a means that enables copyright infringement on the part of some users, but not of all users. They, too, have created a new technology with a range of different uses, some legal and some illegal. So shouldn’t they, too, be off the hook — based on the Sony precedent? The problem is, there’s a big difference between VCRs and the software at issue here. At the time Sony was decided, the Court noted, the average American’s use of his or her VCR was for “time-shifting” – that is, to record favorite television programs to be seen at a more convenient time. In sho
