UK Gov't Plans To Give 'Greater Freedom To Use Copyright Works'

crimperman writes "The U.K. government is planning to change their copyright laws to give 'greater freedom' on usage. The Dept. for Business Innovation and Skills say the new measures 'include provisions to allow copying of works for personal use parody and for the purposes of quotation.' (There is currently no 'fair use' law in the U.K.) They also say the provisions 'allow people to use copyright works for a variety of ... purposes without permission from the copyright owners,' and 'bring up to date the provisions for education use.' A sensible copyright law from the U.K.? What are the chances of this getting through?"

Things the UK government / agencies want

[gnasher719]

First, they want to change laws that make basically everybody in the UK a criminal. It seems that when you buy a CD, ripping it onto your Mac makes you a criminal, downloading it onto your iPod makes you a criminal again. Same when you download music from Amazon and put that onto your iPod (or your Android phone, doesn't make a difference). Clearly if everyone went to jail who did that, then the only ones left outside would be half a dozen pensioners. (On the other hand, if all those criminals who happen to be judges were taken to court first, then the whole thing wouldn't work).

The other thing that the government wants is to make it easier for businesses to use other people's work. Like take the works of some professional photographer, remove all the metadata, and then voila! you can't find out anymore who created it, so businesses are now free to use it.