Brillient! I had forgotten the UPROAR over the VCR industry! MPAA: A Medieval Guild, Committed to Fight Progress at Any Cost

You probably didn’t know that the VCR (video cassette recorder) was a machine dangerous to the economy. You didn’t realize that is VCRs were allowed to be sold to private individuals, this would destroy the film industry, and millions of people would be left without jobs. There would be no creativity, and actors and directors wouldn’t make new movies. The advent of the VCR would destroy the main thing America is known for: Hollywood.

Darn. I wish it was true. But it didn’t work.

And yet, it turns out that thirty years ago, in 1982, the Motion Picture Association of America lobbied legislators in Washington DC to ban the unrestricted sale of VCRs under the pretext that the machine will destroy creativity in America and will lose hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.

We know how that worked out.