The Betamax case would appear (as The Consumerist notes) to buttress services like PlayOn, a so-called “streaming DVR” app that lets you record video streams from the likes of Netflix and Hulu. Then again, there’s the so-called “Betamax case,” a Supreme Court decision from the 1980s that paved the way for legal “time-shifting” of copyrighted broadcast shows with VCRs. There are “fair use” exceptions to the DMCA for non-commercial research, criticism, commentary, and the like, but it’s hard to imagine that downloading (for example) an entire movie would fly, particularly if you never paid for it. First and foremost is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, which states that “circumventing a technology measure” to “gain access” to a copyrighted work is illegal.
