Re:No Copyright for Pornography: A Response to File-Sharing ...
by bitwize on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:09AM
(#13201157)
No, VCRs didn't have movies, at least at first. At a time when porn producers saw a direct-to-viewer distribution channel in the VCR (and a means to avoid the hassle of having to find theaters willing to show their work), the mainstream movie industry saw a threat. MPAA head Jack Valenti delivered his famously tasteless speech stating that the VCR was to the film industry what the Boston Strangler was to the woman home alone. He would go to his grave wishing he could make the VCR illegal; thankfully most of the rest of the industry got a clue and saw the potential of video rental of mainstream movies.
(Fun fact; this is a large part of why VHS won the format wars; at 2 hours an SP VHS tape was long enough to fit a feature-length film of the day on a single cassette. But the victory wasn't so decisive until after Hollywood took interest, well into the VCR's history.)
And video streaming well predated YouTube. Granted, it was a mess of proprietary plugins, RealPlayer, abd/or Windows Media Player. But I'm fairly certain most of the sites doing video streaming before YouTube were porn sites.
(Fun fact; this is a large part of why VHS won the format wars; at 2 hours an SP VHS tape was long enough to fit a feature-length film of the day on a single cassette. But the victory wasn't so decisive until after Hollywood took interest, well into the VCR's history.)
And video streaming well predated YouTube. Granted, it was a mess of proprietary plugins, RealPlayer, abd/or Windows Media Player. But I'm fairly certain most of the sites doing video streaming before YouTube were porn sites.