Ripping CDs Set To Be Legalized In UK 156
nk497 writes "The UK is finally set to legalize format shifting, making it legal for the first time to rip songs or films from CDs and DVDs. Ripping is technically illegal under copyright protection laws, despite most industry lobbyists agreeing it was time for a change. The rules look set to be modernized as the government endorses a recent intellectual property report, which also called for the government to ditch plans to require ISPs to block illegal file-sharing sites without a court order."
Seriously? (Score:3)
It was illegal in the UK? I would have thought that of all places, it would have been illegal in the US. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction I guess...
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
It is indeed currently illegal to format shift here
but it's not enforced
Under the same law it's technically "illegal" to tape something off the TV
but only in the most obvious of obvious selling-bootleg-copies-down-the-market instances is anything ever done about it
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Tape it with what?
"Tape" as a verb, meaning 'to record'. Doesn't need to be done on spools of magnetic oxide.
Similarly "ripping a cd" does not mean shredding it into pieces with your hands.
Interesting contrast (Score:1)
US, UK. Both common-law countries, yet they seem have such different legal/judicial "cultures".
I suspect that someone accused of filesharing 24 songs over dialup wouldn't get a multimillion-dollar decision of damages against them in the UK. But, of course I could be wrong. Are there any barristers / solicitors lurking on /. to chime in and give us first hand opinion about the differences in the practice of IP law between the two countries?
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I believe that in the UK you would only have to pay the losses incurred, so 24 songs at 79p would be £18.96, plus small claims court fees (may only top £50-100).
As for suing the average joe for copyright infringement for piracy, the music industry has lost every case in the UK.
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Copyright infringement cases are heard in the Patent County Court, not the Small Claims Court.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
Under the same law it's technically "illegal" to tape something off the TV
No it is not; in fact time-shifting is explicitly listed as an exception in the law. For example, see section 8 of this page [copyrightservice.co.uk]. What is illegal is recording broadcasts in order to build up a library of recordings (i.e. you can't keep the recordings forever), but time-shifting is definitely not illegal.
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I'm surprised they have not tried to close the TV license loophole where you are exempt if you only watch recordings. As long as you never watch any of the live streams you can watch iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD etc. without a license as it currently stands.
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The TV license is not broken in the sense that it exists to fund the BBC and the BBC is well-funded. Thus we have either the finest broadcaster in the world or something close to it. It's pretty sad that papers like the Daily Mail have gone to war with it because of a supposed left wing bias. It was sad that the Murdochs were so vehemently anti-BBC, but given their disgrace their opposition might now be a blessing.
But you are right in the sense that if TV becomes predominantly consumed via a pc, then it wil
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That's a fair point, and one that hadn't occurred to me before so thanks. It does appear a hopelessly inefficient method of taxation. I guess the reason for the survival of the anachronism is that TV licenses are paid per property. Off-hand I can't think of any national taxes associated with property except for those associated with buying and selling it.
Libraries aren't funded from general taxation - they're currently (under-)funded by councils, and reportedly being closed en masse. If there are such thing
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So you can't build an archive to release when the content becomes public domain. While it doesn't surprise me, it makes me wonder. How one should go about legally preserving content for the future? Are there initiatives dedicated to that?
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Well, it's safe to say that I will not live forever, thus I cannot violate such a law.
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Or more likely, celebrities are immune to the laws created by corporations. Especially celebrities that further a corporation's interests (TV entertainer).
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Private Eye (satirical mag published in UK) used to joke that "the jury found the defendant famous."
But I think in this instance, that's not case. Monkhouse was arrested for conspiracy to defraud film companies. He was the little guy. He lost most of his collection anyway because it was seized at the outset and he would have had to establish in court his right to each film individually, at least according to his obituary in the Independent.
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>I'm sure I've heard that making a single backup for your own use is legal due to precedent
Nope, this is exactly what this _proposed_ change is addressing. "Backups" and "format shifting" are currently illegal to make, use of the copy is largely irrelevant here (beyond level of damages), copyright law protects against people _making_ unlicensed copies.
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Hm, and here I was thinking the US was had the most backwards copyright laws in the world. So basically the same type of enforcement as ripping DVDs is in the US then, no action unless you try to distribute the copies?
Some format shifting is explicitly legal in the US (Score:2)
No, some format shifting is explicitly legal. The Philips 765 CD burner [gallagher.com] that I own, for example, is explicitly intended to convert analog audio from other stereo components into digital and record it on CD, or make digital copies of existing CDs, but it (a) will only burn to CD-R discs which are marked "Digital Music" (making sure the music industry gets a cut of the CD price), and has certain copyright features(SCMS) in place to limit making multi-generation copies.
The Audio Home Audio Recording Act of19 [wikipedia.org]
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Things can be illegal in more than one place at the same time.
Looks like the UK has had an outbreak of common sense.
I'm particularly amazed by the line: "...the government endorses a recent intellectual property report". WTF? Heads will be rolling around the floor of the MAFIIA offices today.
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> "...the government endorses a recent intellectual property report".
That's a first. I've lost count of the number of times some quango has been set up to bolster gov't policies and then been quietly buried when their report turns out to recommend the opposite.
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Mandating registration would likely be a breach of the Berne Convention - at least if such registration plays a legal role in the establishment of copyright on a work.
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If by 'flawed' you mean 'excellent' (there are plenty of humorous differences between American English and British English, so I suppose this must just be one of them).
A copyright is serious business. The state grants a temporary monopoly over the work, subject to relatively few limitations, for a span of many years, in order to serve the public's interests in 1) encouraging the creation and publication of original and derivative works that otherwise would not have been created and published and 2) having t
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Have you considered how much of an overhead mandatory regulation would introduce for businesses that offer many different ways to present the same set of underlying data? Maybe the data itself is valuable, requiring significant effort and/or investment to create/collect/organise. Maybe offering to present it in different ways according to the user's needs is also valuable. And yet, permitting a relatively small proportion of those different modes of presentation to be freely copied could effectively negate
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Have you considered how much of an overhead mandatory regulation [sic] would introduce for businesses that offer many different ways to present the same set of underlying data?
Little to no additional overhead, probably. There'd be a standard form, and any business that cared about copyrights on their products (assuming eligibility) would make it their business to establish a routine procedure for preparing and filing registrations. If they really did it a lot, it might even be largely automated since their own internal procedures for tracking jobs would already include a lot of the relevant information (and anyway, the US Copyright Office, like the PTO before it, is getting all t
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Forgive me for not replying to your entire post point by point, but I think that would get too long. I will address a few of the most important points, though.
Firstly, I would gently remind you that we are discussing UK copyright law here, not US. What is and isn't precedent in the US is irrelevant; as you have noted yourself, we have different rules in the UK/Europe.
Secondly, you appear to have read the words "business model" and failed to suppress a common knee-jerk reaction associated with Big Media dino
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Firstly, I would gently remind you that we are discussing UK copyright law here, not US.
True. However, if I can say so without sounding chauvinistic, I think our general model for copyright (based on the original UK authorial copyright laws, thanks) is superior to what you guys have had for well over a century. While I don't care for international minimum standards, and I don't mind if each country tries different approaches to see what works best for its people, you would probably do well to look to our model and to your roots in reforming copyright to something more sensible and better suite
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... I was just amazed that it was illegal in the UK, but not the US, which as far as I knew had more draconian copyright laws.
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Step out you door, head towards a shopping mall. Within you may find something like an entertainment store (HMV/Virgin in the UK) who still continue to stock and sell a surprisingly large amount of these "CDs" containing what some would call "music"
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Hell, he doesn't even need to get out of his chair. He can go to various websites (Amazon/Play.com/BladDVD/tons of others) and find an enormous range of CDs which still sell well. He could even go to sales figures and find that to the best of my knowledge CDs still outsell downloads by a significant margin.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
... find an enormous range of CDs which still sell well.
Blasphemer! Everybody knows you can only ever sell one copy of a CD these days and then piracy takes care of the rest!!
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Sorry. My bad.
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> Within you may find something like an entertainment store
> (HMV/Virgin in the UK) who still continue to stock and sell
> a surprisingly large amount of these "CDs"
Or not. These are a dying breed and have been quickly disappearing since the turn of the century.
The idea that you might find a media store to fit your description in a randomly selected mall is far from a given.
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Only HMV these days, or a very small number of independent stores. Virgin Megastores disappeared from the UK in 2007.
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I listen to and buy a large amount of classical music. Most of it is not and may never be available on anything other than cd.
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I don't have a reference, but based on the fact that it's a long tradition to tape records and rip MP3s from CDs I'm fairly certain it's legal. What is currently illegal is format shifting from DVD or BlueRay disks to other video medium. This is becasue your are bypassing an encryption scheme to do it, which is illegal under the DCMA. As silly as it is, it's legal for me to record my music to computer for personal use (becasue CDs aren't encrypted), but not legal for me to the same with my movies (unless
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"What is currently illegal is format shifting from DVD or BlueRay disks to other video medium"
says who? I hope you don't go by the industry created 'warnings' on the media.
"This is becasue your are bypassing an encryption scheme to do it,"
What? no you don't. Wither you copy it bit by bit, or you capture it after the encryption is done.
I have no idea why you think you can't do a bit by bit copy of a Blu-Ray disk to your HD and then play if back with a Blu-Ray player. At NO POINT in the copying process are y
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it's not ILLEGAL. what you want is the law that makes it illegal.
There isn't one.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#United_States [wikipedia.org]
It's legal if it's unencrypted- ergo, it's fine to rip CDs, technically illegal to rip DVDs, but the latter is not enforced unless you're distributing.
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.... I can understand not RTFA, but not reading the damn comment you're replying to? That's sad. Let me quote this for you:
I tried to check this - can you point to a reference that confirms that format shifting is legal in the US?
Kudos (Score:2)
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I'm sure the devil will be in the detail. This is legislation designed to help the content Stazi, not hinder it.
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I am not trying to be a pessimist here, but I would think there is some small loophole in the new law, that would give the British equivalent of RIAA or MPAA some leverage. Anyone knows anything about this ?
I would doubt it. If its currently illegal, they would have sued 90% of the UK population by now for breaking it. Anyone who owns an MP3 player would almost certainly be guilty.
Yeah, even the BPI realises that format shifting being against the law is stupid:
"In practice, we have never taken any action against consumers who rip CDs to computers or portable music players. Nonetheless, we do believe it would be better for personal CD ripping to be legal and the industry has made proposals to Government to achieve that.”
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7299505/Millions-of-iPod-fans-breaking-law-by-copying-CDs.html [telegraph.co.uk]
good timing (Score:3)
If we're finally getting around to CDs now, I guess sensible laws relating to downloaded/streamed content will be coming in around 2030.
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Good luck but neither are going to come about. I think it's more likely that producers will ultimately give up on DRM than a law is passed allowing us to bypass it for our own personal use.
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It would appear that format shifting a DVD to m4v to watch it on an iDevice will be legal, so yes.
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How do you format shift a DVD without decrypting it?
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Please don't ask difficult questions, citizen.
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How do you watch a DVD without decrypting it?
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You do it without storing the decrypted data.
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The answer is you don't format-shift an encrypted DVD if you don't want to break the law. Ultimately it's a very simple answer to a very simple question (whether you agree with it or not.)
Personally I take the view that I'll rip all my DVDs to my PC and put them onto the telly from there. Technically illegal, but I don't think anyone's going to sue my ass off over it so long as I don't immediately torrent the lot as well.
Copy protection (Score:1)
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Unlikely, that'll still be covered by the EUCD or other bullshit law.
This is just catching up to the state of the art of the mid 90s, when people started (perfectly reasonably) ripping unencrypted cds to their hard drives. These people are now no longer criminals.
Never let it be said that the UK is not at the forefront of technology!
There was a case of a (pretty high-end) product that copied cds to a drive so that they could be played in different rooms a little while back, that was made to carry a notice o
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This is just catching up to the state of the art of the mid 90s, when people started (perfectly reasonably) ripping unencrypted cds to their hard drives.
Make that the mid 70s when people not unreasonably started taping their vinyl LPs to compact casettes to play in the car...
There was a case of a (pretty high-end) product that copied cds to a drive so that they could be played in different rooms a little while back
Actually, the problem there is that the manufacturer violated "don't ask, don't tell" by explicitly suggesting in their advert that people could use it to rip their entire CD collection, and some curtain-twitcher complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (the advertising industry self-regulatory body) who then had no legal choice other than banning the ad.
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"This is just catching up to the state of the art of the mid 90s, when people started (perfectly reasonably) ripping unencrypted cds to their hard drives. These people are now no longer criminals."
Just to nit pick. They are making the action legal in the future. However all of us that have done so in the past and might well do so again before the law comes into effect are still filthy criminals. We broke the law and we could technically still be arrested and prosecuted for it even after the law comes into e
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Just to nit pick. They are making the action legal in the future. However all of us that have done so in the past and might well do so again before the law comes into effect are still filthy criminals. We broke the law and we could technically still be arrested and prosecuted for it even after the law comes into effect.
Last time I looked, ripping for personal use was a civil matter.
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"This is just catching up to the state of the art of the mid 90s, when people started (perfectly reasonably) ripping unencrypted cds to their hard drives. These people are now no longer criminals."
Just to nit pick. They are making the action legal in the future. However all of us that have done so in the past and might well do so again before the law comes into effect are still filthy criminals. We broke the law and we could technically still be arrested and prosecuted for it even after the law comes into effect.
Not really, this is a civil matter so you'd have to be sued by the BPI (UK equivilent of RIAA) - and even they think that format shifting should be legal: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7299505/Millions-of-iPod-fans-breaking-law-by-copying-CDs.html [telegraph.co.uk]
Note the last paragraph " we have never taken any action against consumers who rip CDs to computers or portable music players. Nonetheless, we do believe it would be better for personal CD ripping to be legal and the industry has made proposals to G
Rain on the parade... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Rain on the parade... (Score:4, Informative)
While the extradition treaty is a bit shit, your understanding of it is far too simplistic, and that is dangerous in itself - no UK citizen has yet been extradited for carrying out something legal in the UK that is illegal in the US. All examples of usage of the extradition has been where the act has been illegal in both countries, *and* the US has been able to show that some of the act was carried out in the US.
Re:Rain on the parade... (Score:4, Informative)
All examples of usage of the extradition has been where the act has been illegal in both countries, *and* the US has been able to show that some of the act was carried out in the US.
What about Richard O'Dwyer of TVShack fame? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/big-content-unveils-latest-antipiracy-weapon-extradition.ars/ [arstechnica.com]
The legality of linking It's not clear whether O'Dwyer has even committed a crime under UK law. O'Dwyer is not accused of hosting infringing content himself. Instead, his site provided links to content hosted by other websites. In December, a British judge ruled in favor [torrentfreak.com] of TV-Links, a website that, like Tvshack, offered links to video content, some of it infringing.
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Re:Rain on the parade... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're talking about repealing the extradition treaty as well (cite) [telegraph.co.uk].
The treaty was originally only for "terrorists" but as usual the USA has been abusing it for their own purposes
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Ignoring the other issues with your theory people are bringing up, it's not illegal to format shift in the US. It's illegal to crack CSS in order to rip DVDs to your hard drive (thanks to the DCMA), but that's still illegal in the UK under something called EUCD apparently. At least according to comments above yours. So this is actually an instance where UK law is simply catching up to US law, not going beyond it.
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everything similar to Audio CD or only Red Book? (Score:2)
I'm ignorant about UK laws, do you have some kind of breaking-encryption-is-verboten-law?
Even circumventing completly useless "encryptions" like CSS is afaik not allowed under DMCA, copy prevention systems for audio CDs like intentionally corrupt data are imo similar protected.
Does the format shifting law explicitly include that the original has to be unencrypted?
Re:everything similar to Audio CD or only Red Book (Score:5, Informative)
No, we just have copyright laws that have no concept of fair use.
Therefore we can't time or format shift, can't use copyrighted material in parodies or for other works without getting permission from the copyright holder, and so forth.
Nobody ever prosecuted anyone on these issues unless it was blatantly criminal activity (e.g. selling dodgy copies on a market stall). But ignorance of the law is no excuse, and under these laws about 95% of all UK citizens are criminals. I doubt you'll find anyone alive since the 80's that hasn't copied music to tape for listening in a car/walkman, recorded something to videotape for later viewing, ripped music from a CD as an MP3/AAC file, and so forth. It's just become one of those laws that's there but nobody cares about.
I've not checked the proposed changes, but I suspect that it's a fairly broad - and long overdue - attempt to introduce a more US-like set of exceptions. I doubt that we will be allowed to legally circumvent DRM, though - that would be a step too far for the corporate lobbyists.
People are just reporting the "legal to copy a CD" thing because it's attention grabbing. Most readers will look at the headline and wonder what it's on about, as they didn't know it was illegal...
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Therefore we can't time or format shift
Format shifting is illegal, which is utterly ridiculous, however time shifting is explicitly legal [copyrightservice.co.uk] (see section 8).
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>however time shifting is explicitly legal [
Unless you watch it twice or simply keep a copy beyond the first viewing.
Destroy that old Red Dwarf you taped off BBC2 now you tortuous infringer!!
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"No, we just have copyright laws that have no concept of fair use."
This is an often repeated myth, and is simply not true. Numerous exceptions including time shifting exist in UK law already
See here to get it straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-other/c-exception.htm [ipo.gov.uk]
What is changing is that format shifting, and parody works are being added to the existing list of things like time shifting, and research or review work.
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Therefore we can't time or format shift, can't use copyrighted material in parodies or for other works without getting permission from the copyright holder, and so forth.
Time shifting and format shifting doesn't fall under "fair use" in the US either. There is a huge difference between what you and I would consider fair (anything that doesn't hurt the copyright holder) and what is "fair use" according to copyright law. (Just occurred to me that the copyright holder may feel very much hurt by a parody of his works, but it is still "fair use").
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I'm ignorant about UK laws, do you have some kind of breaking-encryption-is-verboten-law?
I didn't know, but Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 [wikipedia.org] seems to be the relevant law.
IANAL. It seems to be illegal to break encryption for commercial reasons, I'm not sure about non-commercial reasons. But if the encryption prevents things you're allowed to do (so, soon format shifting...?) then there must be a way round that.
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"But if the encryption prevents things you're allowed to do (so, soon format shifting...?) then there must be a way round that."
Not really. Being "allowed" to do something does not mean you have a right to do so. This is also a common misconception regarding the US Fair Use doctrine. Fair Use is not a right, but it is a defence you can use in a case against you.
The difference may seem subtle, but if it was "a right", then companies wouldn't be allowed to use encryption to stop you from exercising your right
Re:everything similar to Audio CD or only Red Book (Score:4, Informative)
"But if the encryption prevents things you're allowed to do (so, soon format shifting...?) then there must be a way round that."
Not really. Being "allowed" to do something does not mean you have a right to do so. This is also a common misconception regarding the US Fair Use doctrine. Fair Use is not a right, but it is a defence you can use in a case against you.
I can't really add anything beyond just copying out the bit of the Wikipedia:
The new section 296ZE creates a remedy via complaint to the Secretary of State if a technical device or measure prevents a person or group of people from carrying out a permitted act with relation to the work. The Secretary of State may issue a direction to the owner of the copyright to take such measures as are necessary to enable the permitted act to be carried out. The breach of such a direction is actionable as a breach of statutory duty.
and the relevant section of the act [legislation.gov.uk].
The law itself is far too confusing.
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This post should be modded up.
In the USA, the First requires fair use (Score:2)
This is also a common misconception regarding the US Fair Use doctrine. Fair Use is not a right, but it is a defence you can use in a case against you.
In Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court held that there are a few things keeping the exclusive rights granted to authors from violating the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press. Expiry is not one of them, but fair use is.
Private copy and tax (Score:4, Interesting)
In France, private copy was always legal, but the fact that it stayed legal for so long is because "private copy tax" was introduced on all storage media (blank CDs/DVDs, memory cards, hard drives). This tax is per MB, and has never been updated, which means that you sometimes pay more tax on a new hard drive than the drive is worth.
Hopefully it won't get like that in the UK...
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Actually it is an European law, and each country decides how much the tax should be. It is highest in France than in any other European country. For example, the tax on a blank DVD is 1.2€, and 20€ for a 1TB external hard drive. Nearly anything that can store audio is taxed, from audio cassettes to car GPS. It is not actually a tax in the sense that it is not contributed to the community but instead directly to the local equivalent of the RIAA. The tax amount is established by a committee composed
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Actually it used to be that "audio" CDs were charged more than data CDs in order to apply just this sort of "private copy tax".
I don't think it was formalised in anyway, it's just that the main media producers also owned the [blank] CD production companies.
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Tories aren't Labour (Score:1)
How can piracy be stopped with such a measure? (Score:2)
With such a measure, the average Joe will claim "format shifting" each time he makes a copy for himself, his friends, his mates.
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Format shifting and distribution are 2 different things.
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But in order to shift formats, you have to copy the data. The original will still there after the format shifting.
Don't worry - the EU will whip them into place (Score:2)
After all being amoral is what copyright is all about.
It means diddly squat, I'm afraid... (Score:2)
As is evident in Canada, where we are about to receive an amendment to copyright that although it explicitly endorses private copying, format and time shifting, and numerous other fair use activities, at the same time it suspends *ALL* of those privileges under the sole condition that the work is protected by any form of digital lock, in addition to prohibiting the sale, creation, or importing of any tools which do not have any significant use outside than defeating such locks, creating additional incentiv
Re:Awesome that the UK legalizes format shifting. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more awesome is that somebody in government actually read a "recent intellectual property report" that wasn't supplied by the MAFIAA.
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Technically thats illegal - same with MS Media Player and all the other music players which will rip a CD to your media library. :-) Its not as if either company are doing much with their billions and the governments could do with a few extra dollars.
Of course, this means that Apple & Microsoft are facilitating the crime and so should be triple fined for it
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More than a lot of the /. postings, this one needs a suddenoutbreakofcommonsense tag. Let's hope U.S. courts eventually come to the same conclusion as their UK counterparts.
Given how rare this happens, I reckon the "random-outbreak-of-common-sense" tag makes... well... more sense.
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We're moving that way. The DMCA gets reviewed every 3 years, and changes do happen:
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blog/fair-use/fair-use-victories-dmca [centerforsocialmedia.org]
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They are also a great way to legally acquire stuff that can't be found on iTunes.