Space shifting

Space shifting is a concept that has been argued in copyright law to permit owners of some form of media, such as a song or movie, to convert that media from one format to another, generally by converting an audiotape, videotape, compact disk, or DVD into an electronic file stored on a computer. The term is argued as an analogy to the time shifting argument that succeeded in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), in which the United States Supreme Court held that the sale of VCR's did not contribute to copyright infringement because taping a televised event to watch at a later time was not an infringing activity.

The space shifting argument was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. 239 F.3d (9th Cir. 2001), but only in the context of converting media to electronic files that are to be stored in a system where they are widely available to be copied.