The Double-Dip Mentality

[Doc]

In the US, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 exempts "the noncommercial use by a consumer" of a recording device to record music from copright infringement.  This was specifically intended to legalize the common practice of making copies of music to give to your friends; record companies and artists get a royalty paid by the manufacturers/importers of music recording devices to compensate.

-- frink
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And this is just a rehash of the same old same old of what happened way back when in the late 70s early 80s when there was a mass panic about VCRs and Betamax machines and cassette recorders. I was not aware that they did it again in the 90s. Er, I knew in the early 90s they updated this to include CDROMs when some of the first burn technology became available and easily accessable to the public. The sin tax was applied to both CD burners and CD media.

So, what, there is like a ten year cycle?

See, it's like I said. The problem here is that the entertainment industry can't get any cash kickbacks from the actual means of transfer. With VCRs and tape players, they got cash money kickbacks and they relented on calling everybody pirates. It was perfectly legal and ok to make a copy of AC/DC's Back in Black or Houses of the Holy and share it with your friend. Or if you rented a video or bought one and made a copy. It was all considered ok because the entertainment industry strong armed all the right people and found a way to at least make a little bit of money somehow. They knew people were doing it, and there was nothing they could do to stop them. Throw your weight around, make a lot of noise in the media, and then when they found a way to make a few bucks here and there it became legal and they shut up and stopped bitching. But until they found a way to make money, it was the bloody end of the world going on. Piracy was rampant. They were losing millions of dollars and their stable of artists and performers were having to buy second rate cocaine and settle on living in 10 room mansions instead of the 20 room models they desperately wanted. People transfering music from one cassette to another was going to be the end of the music industry. It was going to fall any day now, people were jumping out of windows and the future was uncertain. VCRs and cassette recorders were going to bring an entire empire to it's knees, and possibly even destroy America. Geeze, there was such a panic way back when. And then it practically dried up over night and just like magic, everybody shut up about the whole mess.

Now however, with Limewire and email and all those different means to transfer files, they can't get their kickbacks. So they want to make sure it stays illegal, till they can figure out a way to make money off of it, and then at that time, it will be made legal. To bad it's not as simple as slapping a sin tax on a dual cassette recorder boom box that dominated the 80s. Or jacking up the price of a VCR to over 500 dollars.