Why can’t you rent CDs in the U.S.? I’ve heard it’s illegal and that a case challenging this is winding its way through the courts. In Japan it is legal, there are something like 6,000 rental outlets, and per capita blank tape sales run twice the U.S. total, with original CD sales much lower than in the U.S. What nefarious group allows videos to be rented, but not CDs? Where is the logic in law in all this? –Charles Loengard, New York
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Listen, Charles, that affronted-consumer bit might work with your impressionable friends, but don’t try it with me. The copyright laws in the U.S. and most other countries (but not Japan) make it illegal to rent recordings, for the simple reason that otherwise everybody would rent albums for a fraction of the sale price and copy them for cheap on blank tape. Sure, you can do the same with videos, but you need two VCRs, and anyway, who besides three-year-olds hooked on Bambi watches a movie more than once? On the other hand, anybody with a CD player and a tape deck can copy a compact disc, and lots of people replay their favorite tunes ad nauseam, e.g., anything by the New Riders of the Purple Sage, beloved by the flower children who rented the apartment next door to me at college. To this day the mere thought gives me the shudders. But I digress.
The record industry and the U.S. government have been attempting to stamp out recording rentals in other countries via the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) talks, so far with mixed success. Rental shops are said to be increasingly common in Italy, the Netherlands, and Australia. Now another threat is looming: digital broadcast of albums via radio and cable TV, coupled with improved digital-cassette technology. Some think the industry might as well wake up and realize its business is making recordings, not records (or CDs), and focus its efforts on extracting royalties from consumers who essentially do their own manufacturing using home recording equipment.
