Audio Home Recording Act

Audio Home Recording Act

Other short titles	Audio Home Recording Act of 1992
Long title	To amend title 17, United States Code, to implement a royalty payment system and a serial copy management system for digital audio recording, to prohibit certain copyright infringement actions, and for other purposes.
Acronyms (colloquial)	AHRA
Nicknames	Audio Home Recording Act of 1992
Enacted by	the 102nd United States Congress
Effective	October 28, 1992
Citations
Public law	102-563
Statutes at Large	106 Stat. 4237
Codification
Titles amended	17 U.S.C.: Copyrights
U.S.C. sections created	17 U.S.C. ch. 10 § 1001 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 1623 by Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) on August 1, 1991 Committee consideration by Senate Judiciary, Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks Passed the Senate on June 17, 1992 (passed voice vote) Passed the House on September 22, 1992 (passed without objection) with amendment Senate agreed to House amendment on October 7, 1992 (agreed voice vote) Signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on October 28, 1992

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 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.

By the late 1980s, several manufacturers were prepared to introduce read/write digital audio formats to the United States. These new formats were a significant improvement over the newly introduced read-only digital format of the compact disc, allowing consumers to make perfect, multi-generation copies of digital audio recordings. Most prominent among these formats was Digital Audio Tape (DAT), followed in the early 1990s by Philips' Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) and Sony's Minidisc.

DAT was available as early as 1987 in Japan and Europe, but device manufacturers delayed introducing the format to the United States in the face of opposition from the recording industry. The recording industry, fearing that the ability to make perfect, multi-generation copies would spur widespread copyright infringement and lost sales, had two main points of leverage over device makers. First, consumer electronics manufacturers felt they needed the recording industry's cooperation to induce consumers – many of whom were in the process of replacing their cassettes and records with compact discs – to embrace a new music format. Second, device makers feared a lawsuit for contributory copyright infringement.

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