Regulation, Music

Regulation of Music Lyrics

The uproar over music lyrics may seem recent, but in fact, the banning of music goes back hundreds of years. Yet, with the rise of heavy metal in the early to mid-1980s, and later with the rise of hip hop and rap in the late 1980s, concerns of obscenity, pornography, and indecencies were brought to the forefront.

In 1985, the RIAA agreed with the National Parent Teacher Association and the Parents Music Resource Center to include warning labels on albums containing explicit lyrics that depicted sex, violence, or substance abuse (see Figure 1). It was hoped the decision would facilitate intelligent decision making on the part of parents regarding their children's album selections. Although the recording companies and the artists decide which albums should be labeled, the RIAA contends that the practice of “parental advisory” labeling is widely adhered to within the recording industry.

In addition to the parental advisory label, it is now common for artists and record companies to record two versions of an album—an explicit version and an edited version—allowing options for parents and consumers without censoring the speech of the artists. Certain retail stores sell only the edited versions of [Page 712]albums. Other stores have policies forbidding the sale of explicit versions to consumers under 18 years old.

The advent of widespread online music retailing has made the regulation of explicit content somewhat problematic. The RIAA outlines voluntary guidelines for online retailers as it does for record companies, but because online music distributors are typically not affiliated with the record companies or the artists, online retailers make their own decisions about whether or not to follow the RIAA's Parental Advisory Policy.

As online distribution of music became commonplace in the mid-to-late 1990s, the issue of property rights climbed to the forefront of music regulation. This phenomenon led to the second important issue surrounding the regulation of the music industry: consumer file sharing.

Online Piracy

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes it a crime to circumvent antipiracy measures built into commercial software, outlaws the manufacture or sale of code-cracking devices for illegally copying software, limits Internet service providers from copyright infringement liabilities for transmitting information over the Internet, and requires webcasters to pay licensing fees to record companies. Despite the best intentions of this act, enforcement remains problematic because illegal file sharing involves millions of transactions per day.

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