UK To Finally Legalize Ripping CDs and DVDs 92
An anonymous reader writes with news that the U.K. government will finally legalize the copying of data from CDs, DVDs, and other types of media for personal use. This will allow U.K. citizens to legally make backups and digital copies of their media, which has been forbidden by copyright law previously. The changes will go into effect this June. It also grants permission for people to upload the ripped media to a remote host, though sharing of course remains illegal.
"The mismatch between the law and public opinion became apparent through a Government-commissioned survey, which found that 85% of consumers already thought that DVD and CD ripping was legal. More than one-third of all consumers admitted that they’d already made copies of media they purchased. Besides the new private copying rights, the upcoming amendments will also broaden people’s fair use rights. For example, people no longer have to ask permission to quote from or parody the work of others, such as a news report or a book, as long as it’s “fair dealing” and the source is recognized."
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
... I can rip my music CDs and play them on my Diamond Rio MP3 player.
Re: Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
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Take care, unsanctioned public broadcasts are still prohibited. So, tune it down :D
Grrr... (Score:5, Funny)
But what about those of us who want to rip Betamax, Casettes, Grammerphone Records and VHS?
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But what about those of us who want to rip Betamax, Casettes, Grammerphone Records and VHS?
Hell, what about Edison Cylinders [loc.gov]?
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Re: Grrr... (Score:3, Funny)
Out of copyright? Copyright ends as soon as Chernobyl is no longer radioactive, which we estimate is 10,000 years.
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No that is why Walt Disney is in a cryronics pod - lifetime plus 70 years == to infinity and beyond
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The last one of those was destroyed [youtube.com] some time ago.
That didn't take long. (Score:3, Insightful)
But what about cassettes?
What about copy protection. (Score:4, Interesting)
DVD are still mostly copy protected by the highly ineffective CCS copy protection. blue ray are more effectively protected, but the protection still is breakable by a lot of tools.
by european law is decided:
"the following anti-circumventing rules were implemented in European Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the council of May 22, 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society.
This directive states in article 6, 'Obligations as to technological measures':
Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective.
"
So you may copy it, but if you break ANY technlogical measure, you an still be sued by the content mafia fpr breaking copy protection technology. So think twice before you make a guide on your homepage how to copy a dvd.
Re:What about copy protection. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but CSS isn't a copy protection technology of any kind. It's easily defeated within a matter of seconds on any modern PC. Legally, sure, but then if you're allowed to make an archive copy, that's your legal "right" and the industry would have to take you to court to decide which wins, and it will be expensive and (potentially) catastrophic for them to try it.
What pisses me off ten times more is the "unreadable sectors" copy protection. It means that I've never watched a DVD on my laptop as all the ones I've tried have that shit and even with properly licensed DVD playing software and a DVD compliant drive, I can't watch it.
So what do I do? I run it through one of the programs that just sucks the data off and ignore the errors, which leaves me with only "CSS" to defeat and half the time it's not worth the bother - leave it on, let the player worry about it and 99% of the time I only ever play from European region anyway so it doesn't hinder things to use something set in European region for CSS decryption.
To be honest the things that piss me off go in the order:
- Unreadable sectors
- Blocked UOPS
- Too much shit on the beginning of the movie (sometimes MINUTES before you can even get to the main menu).
- The law about making a backup of a product I have in my hands for my own, personal, reasonable usage (so I don't wear my discs out and have easy access to the content).
- CSS
Re:What about copy protection. (Score:5, Informative)
You should stop giving them money. Besides the inherent silliness in paying for a product you know to be broken, you're also financing the next ACTA or TPP.
Buying DVDs is donating to the Taliban of copyright law.
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It means that I've never watched a DVD on my laptop as all the ones I've tried have that shit and even with properly licensed DVD playing software and a DVD compliant drive, I can't watch it.
I've never had a problem watching a DVD on a Mac. Not trolling, but there you are.
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I've never had a problem watching a DVD on a Mac.
What happens when a buddy from EU sends you a disk of EU region code?
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I have no friends in the EU...no one would ever send me anything...
I feel for you. <crickets>
Fill in the blanks in any way it may please you. So, what do you think about goldfish?
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In the UK that would be fine as they also use the same region as the rest of EU (2). Now, if a buddy from US sent one ...
Finally, someone who can read. :-) Hi.
Yeah, see I've got this bud currently across the pond don't ya know, and I get all this BBC, GDR, Kiev burned ... in my physical mailbox (!!!) and a dvd player <might> play it (dependent upon moi).
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In the UK that would be fine as they also use the same region as the rest of EU (2). Now, if a buddy from US sent one, then that could cause a problem.
I've been on the net since ca. '90, and I have acquaintances from South Africa through South America through Eastern Europe and we buy each other "Seasonal Gifts" ... and they can't play what I bought with cash and sent them (and vice versa)? Highway robbery! What are there, ca. 180 - 200 countries out there, and we can't talk to each other in the 21st Century, why? I want heads on pikes.
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Re:What about copy protection. (Score:4, Interesting)
By this exact same argument, many house-locks deployed are not 'security', and breaking them is therefore not a crime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - I recommend.
A feature being ineffectual generally does not mean that it's not relevant, unless the law specifically says that the feature must be effective against skilled attackers.
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If I break into my own house it's not a crime.
Sometimes it's illegal to break into your own hous (Score:2)
But breaking into a house you've leased to someone else is illegal. Sure, you own the container, but the contents are actually owned by someone else. You may be able to do certain things the other person's content is contained in, but you can't do anything with the stuff inside.
(in a troll mood this rainy afternoon)
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Sorry, but CSS isn't a copy protection technology of any kind.
Legally it is a copy protection technology which you are not allowed to circumvent.
Re:What about copy protection. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about copy protection. (Score:4, Insightful)
DVD are still mostly copy protected by the highly ineffective CCS copy protection. blue ray are more effectively protected, but the protection still is breakable by a lot of tools.
I believe that EU courts have declared CSS to not be "effective copy protection", so it is legally breakable.
However, this new legislation does seem fairly worthless because the "consumer guide" that the government has released says that you still don't have the right to break DRM in order to exercise your new right to copy CDs/DVDs/ebooks/etc.
To be honest, I'm surprised how widely the population has accepted ebooks, given how restrictive the licensing terms and DRM are. For example, if you buy a paper book, you can read it, then your wife can read it, you can lend it to a friend/relative to read, then it can sit on your book shelf for 20 years until your kids read it. All of this stuff has been considered "normal" usage for a book - people expect to be able to do this stuff and it seems reasonable to them. Now compare to an ebook - lets take a Google Play book as an example: you "buy" it and you can read it. Then when your wife wants to read it, she has to buy her own copy. You can't lend it to a friend - they have to buy their own too. In 20 years time, your kids will have to buy their own copies (although I have serious doubts that you will still be able to get at your purchased ebooks by that time anyway). There is no mechanism within Play to let you lend books to friends or family and the licence even prevents you from letting someone else read it on your own tablet. To me, all this seems completely unreasonable and I'm really surprised that everyone else doesn't think so to, given that all this stuff has been accepted practice for hundreds of years. Of course, you can choose to strip the DRM and/or break the licence terms, but to my mind what's the point in paying for the content in the first place if you're going to be forced into breaking the law anyway?
Re:What about copy protection. (Score:5, Interesting)
The new law actually takes this into account. If you buy something in a format with 'digital locks' that prevent format shifting, you may write to the Secretary of State for permission to break the locks. This will be granted, unless the same item is available in a format without digital locks. The upshot of this is that if you sell DRM-free media in the UK, then you can force people to buy a second copy to format shift (but only once), but if you don't then they can format shift whatever encumbered format they want.
This means that breaking DRM is explicitly legal in the UK, unless the same media is available without DRM (in which case there's little reason to bother breaking the DRM - you could just buy it in a more friendly format). I'm really looking forward to the Secretary of State receiving thousands of letters a day from people asking to rip their DVDs. Don't forget: you can send one letter per DVD you own...
As a citizen of the UK (Score:2, Funny)
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We all have our good and our bad sides.
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We all have our good and our bad sides.
You've an optimistic view. Bravo. In my experience, 99.9% of your hopes and dreams will be dashed on the rocks of some or other special interest/regulation/user pay fee structure, but we'll all be dead soon, so who cares, really? You only live once. Make sure once is enough.
Offside, what is clinical depression, really?
So, no effective change. (Score:1)
Nobody has ever been taken to court for making a personal copy of something they had already licensed for personal use.
Throwing nutrient-free bones which in fact do little more than harmonise with American legislation to further integrate us into the United States - anyone would think it's election year. I was surprised to see New Labour managing to fuck things up more than Thatcher, but Cameron's done even worse.
Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)
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Everything that plays will be copied. Everything else will be returned for a full refund. Oh who am I kidding. I will not pay for music ever again. That industry needs to go away.
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Insightful)
PROTIP: Never buy the DRM version, get the torrent instead. Buying the crippled version just encourages them to keep doing it.
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)
The last was the most popular until recently where they are putting cinavia in the audio tracks of the DVDs as well now.
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Informative)
Cinavia is usually only used on the North American release of movies, so as long as you rip from a clean source (e.g. European release) you are fine. I have modern equipment that allegedly supports Cinavia and have not had playback issues with torrents. As usual the pirate version is better quality than the paid one.
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Informative)
This relies on the player to look for Cinavia. Blu-ray players do. That's about it. Your rip doesn't work on the bluray player? Pop it on a USB drive and play it on the TV, or via a media centre over the network, or via a DVR.
I run RaspBMC for my media centre. Do you think the XBMC community is all giddy at the opportunity to include such a user friendly feature like Cinavia?
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not even going to comment on your other "solutions".
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You say "most" I say you've named a few, and of those you've mentioned a google search shows some of them don't actually have Cinavia. Also my parent's WDTV Live plays Cinavia content without issue. Also every model of WDTV I've seen released on the local market is listed on Slysoft's site as not containing Cinavia, hence it also doesn't support BluRay menus. A quick google search shows most of Netgear NeoTVs don't implement it either despite talk of it in the market material.
The only equipment mandated to
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I didn't even know Cinavia was a thing until I read this thread and I've been playing films on my PC, consoles and smart TVs regularly. I probably watch more films on a wider range of devices than most people yet I've never even seen or heard of this thing previously.
That's how irrelevant it is.
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That's how irrelevant it *was*. The problem is that this is a copy protection which has existed in the shadows for years so it's been generally ignored even by manufacturers, until now.
Basically it's copy protection enforced by the playing device. Now why would a manufacturer want to install something like that? Why would a media company use a disc protection mechanism that doesn't do anything on most players? Enter Sony and the PS3, which with one of it's critical updates introduced Cinavia. Then there cam
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Things like this never work though, we saw it with DVDs where companies were told they couldn't provide region free players if they wanted to be certified, well guess what? China didn't give a shit, and started churning out cheap unbranded players that were region free - no one gave a fuck that they weren't certified because, well, they all still worked like any other and had other features like being able to play DivX movies and so forth to boot.
It wasn't long before the likes of Toshiba and Samsung said f
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Very true and there's already whispers around the internet that Cinavia was broken a few months ago. The trick is to introduce inaudible pitch changes in the audiotrack but the specifics are not known.
The point about the damages not being irrelevant are however still the same. You remember the retarded notion that Windows XP released in 2001 couldn't out of the box play a disc format released in 1995 despite the OS itself coming on that disc format? Or just look at how long it took for Linux to be able to p
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I absolutely agree for what it's worth, I'm concerned that DRM is given such a free pass here on Slashdot - Valve is positively worshipped here and barely a word wrong can be said about them, yet they're responsible for arguably the greatest proliferation of some of the most intrusive DRM on the PC to date. When they do hashes of DNS cache of suspected cheaters and so forth they're made excuses for and so on "Oh, it's only suspected cheaters" - so fucking what? A game isn't important enough to commit a flag
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For playback on the BFT, I've got a few options. I can use the PS3 (ideal -- the scaler is awesome), the Xbox 360 (meh), a modified Wii (has other issues), an old laptop with a barely-supported video card (similar issues to the Wii), or a Krell DVD-Standard (only issue is lack of HDMI/DVI output, and physical wear and tear on an $8,000.00 device).
For Cinavia-tainted backups (which both the PS3 and 360 puke on), I've found that the best option (as in: the option with the least fuckery) for me is to use AVS [sourceforge.net]
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Meanwhile back in the land of the not so free ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Woot! (Score:3)
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The 85% who thought it wasn't illegal to make a backup were correct as it isn't illegal to do so. However, it was a copyright infringement to do so. So you have something you are entitled to do that is also illegal. Since your consumer rights trump a civil misdemeanour (never tested, but your rights are inviolable) no one wanted the hassle of upholdng that law.
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The 85% who thought it wasn't illegal to make a backup were correct as it isn't illegal to do so. However, it was a copyright infringement to do so. So you have something you are entitled to do that is also illegal. Since your consumer rights trump a civil misdemeanour (never tested, but your rights are inviolable) no one wanted the hassle of upholdng that law.
So you agree with me then?
Notice this part (Score:1)
I'm sure no one has been stopped at copying media for personal use for a long time, but there's also this part in the end of the summary:
Besides the new private copying rights, the upcoming amendments will also broaden people’s fair use rights. For example, people no longer have to ask permission to quote from or parody the work of others, such as a news report or a book, as long as it’s “fair dealing” and the source is recognized.
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I'm sure no one has been stopped at copying media for personal use for a long time, but there's also this part in the end of the summary:
Besides the new private copying rights, the upcoming amendments will also broaden people’s fair use rights. For example, people no longer have to ask permission to quote from or parody the work of others, such as a news report or a book, as long as it’s “fair dealing” and the source is recognized.
That actually is good news, haven't read the details yet, but on the face of it a really positive move. Must check to see what this is designed to distract us from...
But you can't circumvent DRM (Score:2)
The mismatch between the law (Score:2)
And reality.. Common sense.. And many other things, not just 'public opinion'
Finally! (Score:1)
Good ole USA (Score:2)
Anyone wanna bet that the USA will never allow their citizens to create backup copies of their DVDs? Land of Freedo.... never mind...
Australia out of line (Score:1)
Copying (most) DVDs still illegal (Score:2)
As noted in this [ipo.gov.uk] report, Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) (i.e. CSS) are still protected:
"Consistent with the approach taken in relation to other exceptions, no reference to TPMs is made within draft Section 28B. Effective TPMs which prevent copying of copyright materials will however continue to be protected, separately to copyright protection, under Section 296ZA CDPA, and circumvention of such measures will continue to be prohibited."
So Awesome (Score:1)
That is so awesome. Just in time for the tenth anniversary of the obsolescence of CDs and DVDs. W00t!
Still getting CDs (Score:2)
CDs are the best way to get the best sound quality for a reasonable price. They are useless physical objects so i only keep the rips. Good that it's legal now ! (I'm no longer in the UK, but wasn't caught ;)
Burying the lead? (Score:3)
I'm more interested in this part:
People no longer have to ask permission to quote from or parody the work of others, such as a news report or a book, as long as it’s “fair dealing” and the source is recognized.
As a Brit who does indeed already back up my media, yeah, it's cool that that's moving from "illegal but unenforceable and unenforced" to "legal", but finally getting proper Fair Use laws? That's major. With the increasing use of digital media as primary, disc ripping is on the decline anyway, while home-grown content creation and mixing is definitely on the rise. That will have a much larger effect on more people, now and moving forwards.
private copying levy ? (Score:1)
fine toothcomb ? (Score:2)
Sorry if I sound too cynical but has anyone gone over this with a fine toothcomb ? Seems strange to be given new freedoms without something being taken away ?