The system of Private Recording Compensation was introduced by the amendment to the Japanese Copyright Law in 1992, and was started in 1993 (so far only for "sound recording", excluding "visual recording").
The compensation is collected by a collective society called the SARAH (Society for the Administration of Remuneration for Audio Home Recording), which began the distribution of compensation money in 1994. The compensation is distributed to three collective societies in Japan, namely those of (1) music copyright owners, (2) performers and (3) producers of phonograms.
These Japanese collective societies then distribute part of the compensation to their overseas counterparts in accordance with the negotiated contracts based on the statistical outcomes and data of sampling surveys.
We have been informed that the three collective societies have already reached contracts with their overseas counterparts, except for one. Negotiation between the Japanese performers' organization and its counterpart in the United States is still in process.
