UK To Finally Legalize Ripping CDs and DVDs

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."

That didn't take long.

[_Shorty-dammit]

But what about cassettes?

Re:What about copy protection.

[ledow]

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: Finally

[Atl Rob]

It's not like it wasn't happening already for personal use. It was un-enforceable on a personal level anyway. Nice to see some common sense in laws for a change. The industry has been continually shooting themselves in the foot by not embracing new tech in a consumer friendly way.

Re:Good luck

[AmiMoJo]

PROTIP: Never buy the DRM version, get the torrent instead. Buying the crippled version just encourages them to keep doing it.

Re:What about copy protection.

[FireFury03]

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?