Check this URL out:

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2627468,00.html

where it says in part:

"The high court's 5-4 decision 16 years ago in favor of the Sony (NYSE: SNE)
Betamax is one of the pillars of Napster's defense as it heads toward an
Oct. 2 hearing before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco.

...

The reason: In the Sony case, the high court ruled that a technology that
might be used for piracy and other copyright violations cannot be banned --
as long as it was also capable of "substantial noninfringing uses" that were
legal. The context of the ruling was the complaint by the movie industry
back in the late 1970s that the then-new videocassette recorder should be
taken off the market in part because it could be used to make pirate copies
of movies. The court was saying, in effect, that society shouldn't be
deprived of a potentially useful new technology just because of a few bad
apples. "


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