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June 13, 2002

[Rants]
"Like jelly"

[A]n engineer, one Richard J. Stumpf, [...] had conceived a system that could render a Betamax incapable of recording a program unless the broadcaster -- presumably on the copyright holder's say-so -- chose to let it be recorded. The system relied on a simple jamming device at a cost, Stumpf was prepared to testify, of less than fifteen dollars a machine. Expert or no expert, Stumpf could not persuade [Universal v. Sony trial] Judge Ferguson that such a thing was workable -- or relevant. If he were to order Sony to install a jamming device, "as sure as you or I are sitting in this courtroom today," Ferguson said, "some bright young entrepreneur, unconnected with Sony, is going to come up with a device to unjam the jam. And then we have a device to jam the unjamming of the jam, and we all end up like jelly."

(James Lardner, Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the VCR Wars)

(The broadcast flag proposal of the 1980s!)

Posted by Seth Schoen at 03:39 PM