The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (AHRA) amended the United States copyright law by adding Chapter 10, "Digital Audio Recording Devices and Media". The act enabled the release of recordable digital formats such as Sony and Philips' Digital Audio Tape without fear of contributory infringement lawsuits.
The RIAA and music publishers, concerned that consumers' ability to make perfect digital copies of music would destroy the market for audio recordings, had threatened to sue companies and had lobbied Congress to pass legislation imposing mandatory copy protection technology and royalties on devices and media.
The AHRA establishes a number of important precedents in US copyright law that defined the debate between device makers and the content industry for the ensuing two decades. These include:
- the first government technology mandate in the copyright law, requiring all digital audio recording devices sold, manufactured or imported in the US (excluding professional audio equipment) to include the Serial Copy Management System (SCMS).
- the first anti-circumvention provisions in copyright law, later applied on a much broader scale by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
- the first government-imposed royalties on devices and media, a portion of which is paid to the record industry directly.
The Act also includes blanket protection from infringement actions for private, non-commercial analog audio copying, and for digital audio copies made with certain kinds of digital audio recording technology.
Read more about Audio Home Recording Act: History and Legislative Background, Serial Copy Management System, Exemption From Infringement Actions
Famous quotes containing the words home, recording and/or act:
“In 1869 he started his work for temperance instigated by three drunken men who came to his home with a paper signed by a saloonkeeper and his patrons on which was written “For God’s sake organize a temperance society.””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)