Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Courts (or rather, judges) also interpret the law, and those interpretations very often set legal precidents which other courts then follow. A court can certainly decide, for example, whether or not a particular activity constitutes "fair use".
A good example was the 1984 "Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.," case (464 U.S. 417), where Universal Studies tried to prohibit Sony from selling video recorders, claiming that they infringed copyright. Sony won, and the case set a number of important legal precidents, which still exist today: that manufacturers of recording devices cannot be held responsible for acts of copyright infringement committed with those devices, and that recording of TV shows for the purposes of time-shifting constitutes fair use.
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If I am correct, I doubt that Sony believes in that position any longer - as they are now an Entertainment providing company that would probably prefer to protect their property from copying and/or liberating from copy-protection.
I have noticed that their dvd players do not play divx xdiv disks or avi content.