Book Description

Home recording technologies allow today's consumer to make near-perfect copies of recorded music, television shows, movies, and other copyrighted works for private use at home. With the advance of digital recording equipment, consumers will be able to reproduce these copyrighted works with even greater accuracy. This is an issue of great concern for copyright owners, who claim that home copying is detrimental to their sales. This report presents an examination of home recording technologies and their relationship to the legal status of home copying, a comparison of the economic effects that home audiotaping may have on the recording industry with the effects that restricting home taping might have on consumers, a discussion of legal action that Congress or the industry may initiate, and the results of a national survey of home taping and copying behavior. The report is divided into seven chapters: (1) Summary, Issues, and Options; (2) Technological Change and Home Copying; (3) Legal Aspects of Copyright and Home Copying; (4) An Overview of the U.S. Record Industry; (5) Copyright Royalties for Music and Sound Recording; (6) The OTA (Office of Technology Assessment) Survey; and (7) Economic Perspectives on Home Copying. Appendixes contain a description of the survey development and review, a copy of the survey questionnaire, OTA survey tables, and a list of contractor reports related to the study. (MAB)