Legal Definitions - Audio Home Recording Act

The Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) is a United States federal law passed in 1992. Its primary purpose is to balance the interests of copyright holders (like musicians and record labels) with the desire of consumers to make personal, non-commercial copies of copyrighted music.

The AHRA achieves this balance through two main provisions:

• Royalty Payments: Manufacturers and importers of digital audio recording devices (like certain types of CD recorders or digital audio tape players) and blank digital audio recording media (like recordable CDs or digital audio tapes) must pay a small royalty fee on each unit sold. These fees are collected and then distributed to copyright holders to compensate them for potential home copying.
• Serial Copy Management System (SCMS): The law requires these digital audio recording devices to incorporate technology that allows users to make a single copy of an original recording for personal use. However, this technology prevents users from making further copies *from that first copy*. This means you can copy an original, but you cannot make a "copy of a copy."

Essentially, the AHRA protects consumers from copyright infringement lawsuits for making personal, non-commercial digital audio copies, provided they use devices that comply with the act's requirements.

Examples:

• Manufacturer's Royalty Obligation: Imagine a company in the late 1990s that manufactured dedicated MiniDisc recorders, which were popular for recording music. Under the AHRA, this company would have been required to pay a specific royalty fee to the U.S. Copyright Office for every MiniDisc recorder and every blank MiniDisc sold. This fee would then be distributed among copyright holders whose music might be recorded by consumers using these devices.

  This illustrates how the AHRA directly impacts manufacturers of specific digital audio recording hardware and media by imposing a royalty payment system to compensate artists and labels for potential home copying.

• Consumer Personal Copying and Copy Protection: A music enthusiast purchases a new album on a compact disc (CD). They use an AHRA-compliant standalone audio CD recorder (a device specifically designed to record audio CDs, not a general-purpose computer drive) to make a personal copy of the album onto a blank recordable CD. This copy is for their own use, perhaps to listen to in their car.

  This demonstrates two aspects of the AHRA: First, the act permits this personal, non-commercial copying without fear of copyright infringement. Second, the built-in security mechanism in the CD recorder would prevent the enthusiast from then taking that *copied* CD and using the same type of recorder to make a *second-generation copy* from it. The device would recognize it as a copy and block further serial copying, adhering to the SCMS requirement.

• Protection from Infringement Suits: In the early 2000s, a college student regularly used their Digital Audio Tape (DAT) recorder to record their favorite radio shows, which often featured copyrighted songs. They kept these recordings for their personal listening pleasure and never shared or distributed them.

  This highlights how the AHRA provides legal protection. Because the DAT recorder was a "digital audio recording device" covered by the act, and the student's recordings were for private, non-commercial use, the AHRA shielded them from potential copyright infringement lawsuits by the music's copyright holders. The act essentially legalized such private home recording, provided the device complied with its requirements.