We go back to the days of renting video cassettes for this week’s Cochrane history feature. It’s based on a story in the April 11th, 1984 issue of the Northland Post.
Stephen Prasad, who owned Video Mart on Railway Street, was charged with 60 copyright violations The Crown decided to proceed with only ten of them in court.
Prasad had bought the tapes from a distributor who sold homemade copies to several video stores.
Prasad’s lawyer, Norm Karam, pointed out to the judge that copyright legislation didn’t consider the offence to be too serious, allowing only for a ten-dollar fine per infraction.
The copies were not returned to Prasad.
Thanks to the Cochrane Public Library for the use of its archives to produce our weekly history feature.