Low Blow for High C

Succumbing to the unproved claims of the music industry, a committee of the House of Representatives has voted to place a one-year ban on the sale of digital audio tape machines that can record as well as play back. This is an unprecedented effort to deny consumers the benefits of a new technology, and the full House should refuse to go along.

Digital audio tape is the next step in the development of superhigh-fidelity audio equipment. It follows on the heels of the compact disc, which reproduces sound with unparalleled clarity. But compact discs, like conventional phonograph records, can only play back; they cannot record. Digital audio tape is to compact discs as conventional tape is to conventional LPs. It can record as well as play back. And there’s the rub.

The music industry fears that when these machines get into consumers’ hands, few if any people will purchase new records, tapes or compact discs. Instead, the music executives say, everyone will be using the new machines to make perfect recordings of somebody else’s perfect tapes and discs, thereby depriving the industry of $1.5 billion a year in sales. This number is a guess at best--inflated, no doubt, to make the situation sound worse than it is.

In any case, the industry wants Congress to require that digital audio tape machines sold in the United States contain a microchip rendering them unable to copy prerecorded tapes or discs. This scheme will also lower the quality of music that is simply played back on the new machines, and the result will be to make them essentially useless. At $1,000 to $1,300 each, the machines will have little appeal to consumers, and the new technology will die aborning.

Consumers should be able to purchase these machines with their full capabilities, and they should be able to make copies for their own private use. Commercial piracy, which is the real problem, can be thwarted in other ways. Besides, there is scant evidence that home taping is anywhere near the problem that the music industry insists it is.

Congress should not try to legislative against progress. History shows that it doesn’t work. Nor should it.