The advent of digital recording brought with it some unresolved regulatory issues for the
music industry. Digital recording devices are capable of making a perfect copy of the
original recording, as well as making a perfect copy of such copy. Other words, there is no
degradation of the audio signal as progressive copies were made; unlike the analog devices,
like cassette recorders, for instance, that would degrade the signal with every additional
copy. OK, so that’s a good thing, right? Long live digital. Well, it is a good thing,
and a step forward technologically, but business wise, it became a music industry nightmare.
It’s like getting an oven that when you bake a loaf of bread in it, you can indefinitely
split and share that loaf, and never have any less because of it, and every piece you
share with others was exactly the same as yours. All the others need, is just a plate
to put their piece on. Get a few of those ovens in the neighborhood, and no one has
to buy their own bread anymore. So, down goes your local bakery, see?
And so just like that magical oven, consumer-type Digital Audio Tape recorders, CD recorders,
Mini-Disc recorders, and so forth, that were entering the market in the late 80s and early
90s, all had this digital copying advantage of creating perfect copies. So, many music
fans started just copying somebody else’s original digital audio product, like a CD,
instead of buying it themselves, and got perfect copies of it. Well, how do you mean “started”?
Didn’t we have that music copying thing going on before? What about all the records
that were copied onto cassettes by music fans, and all the prerecorded cassettes that were
copied onto blank cassettes, and the whole late 70s and 80s “mix tape” thing? Well,
that wasn’t the most fortunate of the situations for the industry either, but those were not
perfect copies, and if you wanted to have a copy that sounded like the original, you
simply had to buy the original. But now, you could have a copy that was as good as the
original, and that raised some serious concerns, so the industry turned to Washington for a
OK, so they wanted to restrict consumer type digital audio recorders, from being manufactured
and distributed, on the account of this copyright protection threat, right? Well, they probably
could not go that far, since the fact that you could infringe a copyright by using a
certain device, doesn’t mean that the device would be banned by law. Cassette recorders
could be used to copy and distribute audio copies illegally, but were not banned. Because
you could use them legally as well, and just make copies of the recordings you own, for
your own home use, and that was considered legal and “fair use”. Plus, the major
players in the recording industry didn’t want to ban consumer type recording devices.
Why not? Wasn’t that the source of the problem? Yes, but it was also a source of revenues
for some of them.
You see, four of the six major labels at the time, had business interests in the consumer