My vcr is illegal????????????

If you value your right to record on your vcr, cd burner or other device, and/or think that sharing files on P2P networks should be legal as long as there is a blanket fee to the music industries to pay the artists & writers for their work, much like broadcast rights for radio stations, please take note of the following. New legislation (formerly known as the INDUCE Act) being pushed through the Senate by lobbyists for the music and movie industries would override the Betamax decision. To quote an article on savebetamax.org "The Betamax VCR died more than 15 years ago, but the Supreme Court decision that made the Betamax and all other VCRs legal lived on. In Sony vs. Universal (known as the Betamax decision) the Court ruled that because VCRs have legitimate uses, the technology is legal—even if some people use it to copy movies. Of course, the movie industry was lucky it lost the case against VCRs, because home video soon became Hollywood's largest source of revenue. And the freedom to use and develop new technology that was protected by the Betamax decision set the stage for the incredible growth in computer technology we've seen in the last few decades." That Supreme Court decision is the only thing that protects your right to own a VCR, tape recorder, CD-burner, DVD-burner, iPod, or TiVo. "And if the the major record labels and the movie studios get the power of veto over new technology they'll use it: just as they tried to stomp out the VCR in the 70's and 80's, the music and movie industries want to force all content to go through their own restricted channels." This also effects P2P file sharing. As noted on the Electronic Frontier Foundation site "..the Copyright Office provided the Senate Judiciary Committee with recommended language meant to replace Senator Orrin Hatch's "Induce Act," S. 2560. The proposed language targets companies who make "public dissemination" technologies, where those companies make money from, or attract users with, copyright infringement. The proposal is a break with the doctrine established by the Supreme Court in its famous "Betamax" ruling, which says that technology companies cannot be held liable for copyright infringement by their customers, so long as the technology in question is capable of substantial noninfringing uses. In its ruling in MGM v. Grokster, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently reaffirmed that the Betamax doctrine applies to peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software. EFF represents one of the prevailing defendants in that case." Click the 2 links in the above to find out more & how you can help fight for your rights.