A question that now confronts producers, distributors, and consumers of information, as well as the manufacturers of information technology and the government is: what is the nature of copyright protection in the Information Age? Congress has a Constitutional mandate to protect the rights of innovators but has refused to act in the case of videocassette recorders (VCRs), and an analysis of the decision making process in the VCR situation, where progress in informational technology threatens the copyrights of information producers, may help explain Congressional unwillingness to exercise its power. The industries and copyright owners who have felt themselves most directly threatened by the VCR have pursued two primary routes to protect their interests, the Federal Courts and Congress. In both areas they have been opposed by the manufacturers of VCRs and by supporters of the individual's right to videotape at home. The Betamax decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1984 ruled that the sale of videotape recorders (VTRs) by the Sony corporation to the general public does not make the machines' manufacturers and marketers responsible for the potential infringement of Universal City Studios' and fellow respondents' copyrights. This case leads to the need for several policy decisions for the future of VCRs, information technologies in general, and the protection of copyrights: (1) legislation against "Black Boxes" (mechanisms designed for the sole purpose of defeating internal protection against unauthorized duplication); (2) the right of copyright owners to choose to encode any work they want to protect; and (3) the creation, by Congress, of a definition of fair use which considers the implications of new information technologies. (One hundred and twenty-three notes are included, and 25 references are appended.) (MS)