previous post extended ..... In every single one of the cases mentioned the scare mongers where wrong. The Casette Tape allowed the music studios to resell their product again and again as the tapes wore out. The VCR lead to a new industry (Movie Rentals) and a new revenue "window" for the Movie studios.

In the past the Media Industry (Hollywood, record labels) tried to stop every technological innovation. Player Pianos, reel to reel tape decks, casette tapes, DAT, VCR's, DVR's, blank CD / blank DVD sales, and MP3 players all come to mind. In each of the cases they used the same "its the end of the Media industry" drivel seen in this FCC Filing. 

These scare tactics against new technology are nothing new and have been used since the time of Johannes Gutenberg when scribes would be put out of work...

"I foresee a marked deterioration in American music...and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue -- or rather by vice -- of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines..." -John Philip Sousa on the Player Piano (1906)

"The public will not buy songs that it can hear almost at will by a brief manipulation of the radio dials." -Record Label Executive on FM Radio (1925)

"But now we are faced with a new and very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the videocassette recorder." -MPAA on the VCR (1982)

"When the manufacturers hand the public a license to record at home...not only will the songwriter tie a noose around his neck, not only will there be no more records to tape [but] the innocent public will be made an accessory to the destruction of four industries." -ASCAP on the Cassette Tape (1982)

Now for one last quote   "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"