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Originally Posted by robert bartsch
...but in the case of the DVR, I've already paid the artists via my cable bill, dido for each rented movie...
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You paid for the right to view an authorized copy & return it, not for the right to make an unauthorized copy to keep forever. Just because you paid the artist *something* doesn't give you the right to circumvent the price they are asking for a purchase vs. a rental. E.g. they want $20 for the legal, authorized DVD/BD for you to own, not just some fraction of the $4 rental fee. As a consumer, if you feel the price is too high for that, then your legal, proper response is to simply not buy it, not rent it & make a copy. If the market agrees with you, that the price is too high for purchase, then the disc won't sell & the price will come down, perhaps to a more palatable level for you. If not, well, just live without the disc, or simply rent it again if you wish another viewing.
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So people who have made VCR copies of movies they rented for the last 30 years are violating copyright laws?
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Yes.
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Then why haven't the artists prevented electronics manufactorers from selling dulicating equipment?
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The core of the court ruling was that if equipment had substantial non-copyright-infringing uses, you can't bar their sale just because some people use them to infringe.
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I thought the artists tried this in the 1970-80's and the Supreme court ruled aginst them.
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If you read the ruling (google for "Betamax decision"), you'll see that they only legalized time-shifting, certainly not duplication of rentals.
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The more recent issue with people file sharing music was clearly a different situation since the artists were not being paid by those who downloaded the music; right?
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No. Both giving the studio $0 (illegal download) instead of $1 (legal download) and giving the studio part of $4 (rental) instead of $20(purchase) are harming the owner of the copyright. It's akin to going into a store and altering a price tag, just because you give them *some* money doesn't mean you aren't stealing from them.
If you can't afford to buy movies, just rent! A netflix sub at $17/month is like owning nearly every major (non-porn, domestic) DVD ever made, just the retrieval system is more inefficient than having the disc at home
. But it's a ton cheaper than legally buying thousands of titles ...