So with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grokster case (full text here, req. Adobe Reader), we’re brought again to a discussion of the merits of the Betamax case (Full text of SCOTUS ruling here, req Adobe Reader). SCOTUS, not known most recently for ruling in favor of corporate interests at all, has decided that Betamax holds no precedent here, and is not in the least analogous with peer-to-peer file-sharing. But here’s an idea:

The history of technological development over the last, let’s say, 200 years is a history of changes in scope and scale. The Industrial Revolution not only brought your average civilian into the, um, grand new manufacturing force, but also gave all of us middle-class folk a chance to own goods similar to what were once solely for the wealthy. The automobile extended our world beyond cities, and into un-walk-to-able places out beyond; commercial flight expanded our world even further. Radio, and then television, kept us in touch, in real-time, with this wider world (ok, ostensibly), and the VCR allowed us to keep copies of those images for later viewing.

But file-sharing is nothing like a VCR, because of the distribution system built into the machinery; you’d have to hand someone a VCR tape, but you only have to make files available for access from people all over the world. But what is that if not a change in the scope and scale of the VCR? It might be reductive to say so, but computers, fundamentally, are just awesome Xerox machines, capable of creating (or reading) information, storing, and copying it, all in one machine (you used to need many people with typewriters, filing cabinets, and mimeographs to do what can now be done with your desktop). Every time you save a Word document, or click a hyper-link, you are copying information to your hard drive; it’s simply in the nature of this beast the Pentagon unleashed. The entertainment industries’ former love for digital media has hardened into a fear that they no longer have control of the production methods. Well, they don’t, and it’s no coincidence that the Betamax case hinged in no small part on the fact that people could then watch television shows whenever they wanted, and fast-forward through the commercials.

They found a way to make money off the VCR, and now they’re doing just fine.

Just a thought.