Before Napster and LimeWire, before Megauploads and the Pirate Bay, media companies’ epic struggle against copying, piracy and generally losing control over their creations can be traced to a legal fight more than 30 years ago over a device that has long since passed on to the great trash heap in the sky: the Sony Betamax.

When the Betamax videocassette recorder hit American living rooms in 1976, consumers, for the first time, could tape their favorite TV shows and watch them later. Hollywood hated it.

“The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone,” Jack Valenti, the garrulous head of the Motion Picture Association of America, told Congress.

The Supreme Court almost bought the argument that because it was illegal to copy shows without the copyright holder’s consent, the Betamax must be an accessory to crime. At the last minute, however, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor changed her mind. In a 5-to-4 ruling in 1984, the technology survived.