First, copyright is a civil issue, not a crime. While recent law may[1] have made specific types of mass infringement a crime, in general copyright infringement isn't "illegal". It only makes you liable for actual and statutory civil damages. I suspect this is even true in most jurisdictions.
> it probably did invite people [...]
This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright aw and how the Betamax case affected it. The case wasn't about "inviting" improper actions. There was no disagreement that people could use Betamax to violate copyright. Just like how you believe Google should be guilty of something[2], the movie industry believed Sony should be guilt of copyright infringement.
The allegation was that they had a right to effective protection of their copyright monopoly which video tape technology could undermine. However the court disagreed after Sony proved there were "significant non-infringing uses" for a Betamax tape recorder. From the majority opinion:
>> "The question is thus whether the Betamax is capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses ... one potential use of the Betamax plainly satisfies this standard, however it is understood: private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home. It does so both (A) because respondents have no right to prevent other copyright holders from authorizing it for their programs, and (B) because the District Court's factual findings reveal that even the unauthorized home time-shifting of respondents' programs is legitimate fair use..."
The fact that some people might use technology (Betamax, Google's button) to infringe copyright or break a contract isn't relevant, because that was not the primary, intended purpose of the technology. Because other, legitimate uses exist, the manufacturer of that technology is not liable.
I strongly suggest educating yourself a lot more about copyright and contract law actually work, because your arguments demonstrate a lot of misconceptions about copyright and fundamental errors about law in general.
> Google, on the other hand, should have known better
The only people that "should have known better" are the people that design their businesses to fundamentally rely on products they do no control or even have any contractual influence. Google will always be changing Chrome; expect that or find a way to remove that dependency.
[1] I'm not sure if it has been tested in court.
[2] Also, adding a save button to videos isn't tortious interference of a contract about renting videos either. Adding that button wasn't a tort ("wrongful act"), nor was it intended to affect a video rental business.
I'm well aware of the distinction between civil and criminal law. The word illegal literally just means "prohibited by law" and does not require a criminal act. If it has some more specific technical meaning where you are, that's your concern.
I'm also well aware of the landmark Betamax case. Leaving aside that it is specifically about US law, there were multiple fundamental details in that case that do not apply in this context, such as there being no likelihood of causing nonminimal harm to the potential market or value of the protected works, the time-shifting being described being used to watch a programme that could not be viewed live just once at a later time, and a significant likelihood of a substantial number of copyright holders not objecting to the action. None of these seem to fit my original question from the start of this discussion, which was simply "Which Betamax case involved making permanent copies of material you had explicitly agreed to access on some temporary basis in return for payment?" So the case you keep talking about does not appear to be relevant to the present discussion.
As for businesses knowing better, now a lot of them do, and the result is that they have redesigned their systems to prevent the undesired behaviour. However, I don't think it's reasonable to expect businesses to predict all possible future changes in browsers and to then expend resources dealing with changes that will predictably cause trouble. And again, I would refer you to the issue trackers for the browser, where it's clear that many other people take the same view.
> "Which Betamax case involved making permanent copies of material you had explicitly agreed to access on some temporary basis in return for payment?"
Copies on a hard drive are no more permanent than copies on a Betamax tape.
The browser has no idea if the content was intended to be temporary, or if there was payment. Plus something like cable TV fits that description too, and you're still allowed to record it.
Copies on a hard drive are no more permanent than copies on a Betamax tape.
And both are effectively permanent copies, at least until deleted, and as such both are potentially in violation of copyright law in many jurisdictions.
The browser has no idea if the content was intended to be temporary
Then maybe it shouldn't be actively inviting a user to download a permanent copy?
In many -- perhaps most -- jurisdictions, downloading and saving content off the Web will be an infringement of someone's copyright if not explicitly authorised, so the argument that the browser doesn't know the situation is weak.
And the potential for harm is pretty similar.
Do you really not see any potential for harm in inviting someone who agreed to temporary listening or viewing to save a permanent copy, in a way that is both highly visible and potentially confused with a facility provided by the site operator?
The only solution for site operators if that's the approach you want to take is to lock everything down as tight as possible with TPMs, causing extra work and costs for the site operator, potentially increasing security risks for the viewer, and removing any possibility of trust or turning a blind eye to minor cases that might have been useful for the viewer and tolerable for the site operator. As I've asked elsewhere in this discussion, how is any of that helping anyone?
The level of invitation, the level of harm, it's not that I don't see them, it's that they look exactly the same as you get with a Betamax machine. Insisting that a possibility of harm exists does not affect my point at all. And it's not a big risk, there's really no need to lock things down. Home taping never killed anything. If I had my way DRM on videos would be banned. It's not like it prevents piracy.
When Google introduced that button, I'm aware of some commercial sites that didn't use DRM and saw in the region of a 500% increase in the number of paying users grabbing whatever they could rather than paying for further views, continuing subscriptions, etc. Typically they soon implemented alternative methods of serving their videos, and the problem then disappeared again. It's a myth that such measures don't reduce piracy. They may or may not eliminate it completely, but piracy is not a binary problem and even eliminating a large amount of the casual piracy can be highly beneficial. Equally, even a significant incentive inviting casual piracy that was already possible but was not actually happening can be very damaging.
In England there are strict limitations on time-shifting. You're allowed to timeshift broadcast tv programmes, but only for a limited amount of time. (I think two weeks).
I don't think people time shifting at home was ever enforced in courts.
(I welcome any corrections. English copyright law isn't straight-forward).
First, copyright is a civil issue, not a crime. While recent law may[1] have made specific types of mass infringement a crime, in general copyright infringement isn't "illegal". It only makes you liable for actual and statutory civil damages. I suspect this is even true in most jurisdictions.
> it probably did invite people [...]
This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright aw and how the Betamax case affected it. The case wasn't about "inviting" improper actions. There was no disagreement that people could use Betamax to violate copyright. Just like how you believe Google should be guilty of something[2], the movie industry believed Sony should be guilt of copyright infringement.
The allegation was that they had a right to effective protection of their copyright monopoly which video tape technology could undermine. However the court disagreed after Sony proved there were "significant non-infringing uses" for a Betamax tape recorder. From the majority opinion:
>> "The question is thus whether the Betamax is capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses ... one potential use of the Betamax plainly satisfies this standard, however it is understood: private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home. It does so both (A) because respondents have no right to prevent other copyright holders from authorizing it for their programs, and (B) because the District Court's factual findings reveal that even the unauthorized home time-shifting of respondents' programs is legitimate fair use..."
The fact that some people might use technology (Betamax, Google's button) to infringe copyright or break a contract isn't relevant, because that was not the primary, intended purpose of the technology. Because other, legitimate uses exist, the manufacturer of that technology is not liable.
I strongly suggest educating yourself a lot more about copyright and contract law actually work, because your arguments demonstrate a lot of misconceptions about copyright and fundamental errors about law in general.
> Google, on the other hand, should have known better
The only people that "should have known better" are the people that design their businesses to fundamentally rely on products they do no control or even have any contractual influence. Google will always be changing Chrome; expect that or find a way to remove that dependency.
[1] I'm not sure if it has been tested in court.
[2] Also, adding a save button to videos isn't tortious interference of a contract about renting videos either. Adding that button wasn't a tort ("wrongful act"), nor was it intended to affect a video rental business.