Fast forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the onslaught of the VCR.

• Author: Noah, Timothy

Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the Onslaught of the VCR.

James Lardner. Norton,$18.95. On a November afternoon in 1976, Harvey Schein, president of the American affiliate of Sony, met with Sidney Scheinberg, president of Universal Pictures, to discuss a conflict between their corporations. Sony had recently launched an ambitious advertising campaign for the Betamax, its new videocassette recorder, and Scheinberg was outraged that consumers would be able to reproduce Universal movies and television shows without paying Universal. At lunch, Schein proposed a reasonable, Japanese-style compromise: why not form a committee to get Congress to charge a royalty fee on the Betamax and on every blank videocassette? Scheinberg turned down the offer--perhaps because Universal's parent company, MCA, had invested in the videodisc, a Betamax competitor--and launched one of the most tedious legal and legislative battles of the eighties.

The Betamax war is an excellentcase study of the absurdity of special-interest politics. Each side could assert plausible-sounding rights: Hollywood spoke for "intellectual property' while Sony championed consumer freedom. At the same time, each side was rich.

Because lawyers and lobbyistsrisked little prestige--and stood to gain considerable wealth--arguing either side of the issue before the courts and Congress, the conflict attracted an all-star cast of advocates, including Lloyd Cutler, Robert Strauss, Stu Eizenstadt, and Laurence Tribe; by Lardner's reckoning, the tally included four former top advisers in the Carter White House, two former senators, five former representatives, two former White House economists, two former FCC chairmen, and two former chief counsels to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "No issue facing the nation in recent memory had engaged the attention of a more formidable array of elder statesmanhood.'

The problem, of course, was thatthe real-world stakes were trivial. Neither side could demonstrate that its own well-being--let alone that of other Americans--was seriously at risk. As a result, the money and attention lavished on the issue by the warring parties, by the federal government, and, eventually, by the press, was a huge waste.

If the conflict had any redeemingside, it was its capacity to produce good theater. "It's corporate pigs versus corporate pigs,' one congressional aide told Lardner. "So you sort of...