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
Acts amended	Copyright Act of 1976
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's 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.