Law: Pandora's Tape

VTRs are legal for home use

The videotape recorder (VTR) is the television industry's first really new product for the home consumer since color sets. The compact device can record color or black-and-white television programs, play video cassettes, accept cassettes of prerecorded commercial shows and, with use of an optional camera, produce home movies, all playable on the user's own TV set. The VTR's primary function, taping TV shows off the air, has opened a new kind of Pandora's box. In 1976 two of the biggest movie production companies filed suit, charging Sony Corp., the first firm to market VTRs in the...

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