Analog seems pretty well settled in the US for the past ~40 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive....
But my point is actually a bit different. Weren't VCRs a good thing? Isn't it a bad thing that it is so much harder now to record internet TV than it was to record broadcast and cable TV in the 1980s-2000s?
Yes, but not always. There was a time when it was a new thing, and, when so, it was much argued.
> But my point is actually a bit different. Weren't VCRs a good thing? Isn't it a bad thing that it is so much harder now to record internet TV than it was to record broadcast and cable TV in the 1980s-2000s?
Yes, they were! Yes, it is! But my point wasn't to disagree with you on either of these points, just to observe that it's not that the content owners who went along with previous innovations are suddenly balking at this. Rather, my invocation of even long settled questions like analog recording was meant to point to the fact that content owners have always argued against use of their material that they didn't like, which was any use of their material that they didn't completely control and directly profit from.
I am reminded of the backlash against player pianos, and of Sousa's "The Menace of Mechanical Music." He wasn't wrong of course, though the cat had been out of the bag since the advent of orchestrions, crank organs, and other technology dating back to the 18th century and probably earlier.
> In any case, a download button is basically like a DVR.
> DVRs may be legal according to the law …
The recordability of analog video (in the sense of whether it's OK to do so, not whether it is physically possible—although there was that useless tab on videocassettes), and the acceptability of using a DVR, have not always been settled subjects. To the extent that such things can be quantified, I'd suspect that the amount of conflict over them was roughly comparable if you account for (1) the increased number of people in a position to have an informed opinion and (2) the increased visibility of conflict.