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Originally Posted by Harmon
Just start with the understanding that it is not a copyright violation for you to videotape or record a program off the air. Why not? You are making a copy of the program, aren't you? How is copying a book any different? I think it's pretty clear to anyone, lawyer or not, that making a copy of something does not, all by itself, violate the author's copyright. There has to be an additional element involved for a violation to occur.
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I am not a lawyer (I am a philosopher). But it's my impression that the Betamax Case was pretty narrow. It said that there was at least one non-infringing use of copying a TV program, namely to time-shift: to copy what was being broadcast free of charge by the copyright owner to you at one time, in order to view it at one other time. The court said:
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When one considers the nature of a televised copyrighted audiovisual work ... and that time-shifting merely enables a viewer to see such a work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge, the fact ... that the entire work is reproduced ... does not have its ordinary effect of militating against a finding of fair use.
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In the case of copying of an entire book, it is typically false that the copyright owner has "invited" the reader "to see such a work ... free of charge".
The closest realistic analogy to time-shifting of TV programs would be if you borrow a book from the library, don't have time to finish it before you need to return it, and you copy the book, and then destroy your copy as soon as you finish reading it. But even that doesn't seem to me like a very good analogy, because unlike a TV broadcast, the book is intended to be read at one location at a time, while in my scenario you are potentially reading the copy at the same time as another patron of the library is reading the returned original.
There is also format-shifting. I am not sure courts have ruled on that. But I would be surprised if it would be allowed in cases where the original and copy are had by different owners.