Audio Home Recording Act

OBS: Le 15 juin 1999, la Cour d'appel du 9ème circuit a mis un terme aux débats relatifs à l'application du Audio Home Recording Act de 1992 aux appareils Rio MP3 commercialisés par la société Diamond. Ladite loi, adoptée principalement pour encadrer l'utilisation des lecteurs de cassettes DAT (Digital Audio Tape), oblige les distributeurs et fabricants d'appareil d'enregistrement numérique à équiper ces derniers d'un système empêchant la copie de deuxième génération.

OBS: The main threat so far to the recording industry, is that as each successive copy is identical to the original; there is no loss in quality no matter the generation of the copy. It was precisely for this reason that the recording industry so fervently opposed the introduction of DAT[2] technology in the late 1980s, and succeeded in the passage of the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The issue of copying music onto a cassette did not cause much concern prior to the introduction of DAT as the cost of making copies was restricted by the price of cassette tapes - and each successive copy was of poorer quality than the last. There was little market for second-, third-, or fourth-generation scratchy home recordings.
OBS: 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 Phillips' Digital Audio Tape DAT 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 both companies and lobbied Congress to pass lesgislation imposing mandatory copy protection technology and royalties on devices and media. The AHRA is often overlooked, but it establishes a number of important precedents in US copyright law that that defined the debate between device makers and the content industry for the ensuing two decades.