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UK Becomes Sixth Country to Implement EUCD
orbital3 writes "The UK, as of October 31, 2003, became the sixth nation to implement the laws required to comply with the European Union Copyright Directive with its Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 legislation. This is a short little article about it and here is a copy of the law itself."
It's basically a super DMCA act. It kills your right to make personal backups and prohibits copyright circumvention of any kind. How nice of them.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
These laws are not in stone. They will be changed . You have to let people make backups .
From the article
"Why shouldn't I be allowed to make a copy of a CD I have paid for so I can listen to it on my computer or put it on an MP3 player? This shows that the law can be an ass," said George Gardiner, technology lawyer and partner at law firm Stephenson Harwood.
They can write a book full of laws regarding the illegal usage of one's digital multimedia, but untill some incentive is offered for one not to do things illegally, it will run rampad. As such, I think that the majority in the UK could care less about this. Just think about it, were you on irc today, did you download mp3s of songs you do not own, did you copy a friend's cd, did you even make a full stop at a stop sign while drving or do a rolling stop? If we got penalized for every little things that humans do wrong, the only jobs would be working at a prison, on either side of the bars! I am quite sure that not many even care, and so the companies having their product used illegally need to provide some sort of incentive for those not to copy things and rather buy them..though this is not likely to happen any time soon...
--Shut up and get a mac--
Every country to implement this makes me ever more certain that if every major civilized country in the west implements this sort of a law, there may eventually be some sort of a UN mandate in the vein of the DMCA...
...that's a very worrisome thought indeed.
"Peter Jamieson, the BPI's executive chairman, said in a statement given to vnunet.com: "Once we have digested the implications of the revised copyright legislation and communicated this to our members we will consider the need for a wider awareness campaign and, as and when this is carried out, assess its impact and effectiveness before taking further steps."
In other words:
"Once we push this law through we will coordinate with our hordes of attorneys decide and how many people to sue. After that, we may decide to sue more if its profitable."
"Why shouldn't I be allowed to make a copy of a CD I have paid for so I can listen to it on my computer or put it on an MP3 player? This shows that the law can be an ass," said George Gardiner, technology lawyer and partner at law firm Stephenson Harwood."
In other words:
"Why shouldn't I be allowed to make multiple copies of a CD a friend of a friend paid for so I can listen to it in my car, at my computer, in my MP3 player, and on all my friends' computers. Dammit, this sucks."
This is really getting old. One reason there is a backlash from companies against "fair use" is because people decided to abuse it. One reason people claim to abuse fair use is because media was too expensive? If they simply stopped buying instead of illegally copying we wouldn't have this mess. The market would have corrected itself. CD prices will drop if sales drops are caused by high prices.
*sigh*
sig
Labour is a bunch of right wingers who are fanatically supportive of the US and seem to be a puppet government. The Conservatives - assuming they've finally got their act together - are a bunch of businessmen who rarely show interest in anything that doesn't directly help big business.
We need a party that focusses on rights for consumers. There are a million irritating little things that work against free competition or are not affected by it. The fact that I have no choice for a cable service, Mobile phone companies charging a fortune to other networks for connection charges and the EUCD. Offer some laws for the individuals who don't want to be tied into a 12 month contract for any and every service, and you get my vote.
As long as you didn't listen to the originals whilst you were recording them they classify as "timeshifted copies" on your PC.
Amendments to Section 19 absolves you my Son
"America remains the sweet land of liberty in comparison to the rest of the world."
Riiight. I know things aren't perfect in the UK but at least we haven't set up anything like what you have at Guantanamo Bay, where the usual notions of justice don't even apply:Confess or die, US tells jailed Britons
I don't see the problem with ID cards. You need to prove your identity for anything important anyway - from renting a video , taking money out of a bank account over the counter to claiming benefits. Why not standardise the system, as many other countries already have.
The UK has many 'freedom' problems, from the House of Lords to the ridiculous voting system that gives the government such a huge majority it can shove through whatever legislation it wants. I dont believe that ID cards, despite the paranoia people have about them, are one of those problems.
"America remains the sweet land of liberty in comparison to the rest of the world."
Canada. Seriously.
I always vote for the party I believe in (usually independent). They never win. You're right that I should have considered the other parties, and I'm hoping that Lib Dem can make a decent showing in the next election, but they seem to be remarkably bad at getting the publicity they need. The voting mechanism we use is pretty rubbishy for reflecting the true opinions of the people.
You may not understand how it works in the EU: basically, there are EU directives which each national government is required to implement via its own legislative processes. There's no real choice about it. The real problem about this is the EU is not a very democratic organisation, ie the EU Commission isn't even an elected body and Euro MPs don't expect to be bothered by those who vote for them (like when anti-software-patent activists were accused of "harassing" their Euro-MPs by lobbying them).
So the UK continues its long tradition of repressive legislation and most people will say "Fair enough, I'm prepared to put up with a little more inconvenience if it stops the real crooks." But of course, it doesn't stop them and our liberties get eroded a little more. Trouble is, we're sometimes just a bit too tolerant, esp. of our lousy government and Europe.
So quit whining about "freedom" in the Western world; over here you can openly criticize your government in the press, on the TV, on a public web site without the slightest fear of reprisal.
Unless, of course, the government decides that your 'whining' is a way of aiding terrorism, in which case you can be locked up forever, without any Constitutional recourse, care of Section 81A of the Patriot Act.
Another 'STFU' argument from your local Bush apologist. Hey, who gives a shit what the hell happens in America - so long as it's still better than North Korea? At least *some* part of the Constitution is still good, so who are you to complain?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I don't care about an easy to use identity card that I can opt to carry. I don't want to have to present one on the street to a policeman who asks, who can then mark my card if I'm wanting to protest.
Can you imagine the chilling effect of being forced to provide ID if you wanted to protest, or being put on a register?
Where people dislike optional IDs is the fear that they'll be made mandatory.
... and the EU brought it in at the behest of WIPO. Which happens to be little more than a international legislation recommendation body sock puppet for US corporate interests.
So, ID cards are bad because they might be used in a situation in which the police grossly violate your basic rights of peaceful assembly? The problem in your hypothetical situation is not the card.
> Not that I care; I'm not even British.
[sarcasm]
Well that's alright - the DMCA itself only ever affected US citizens [cough]Dmitri[/cough] [cough]DVD Jon[/cough], right?
Boy am I grateful I only live in Europe - if I were British as well now I'd be screwed.
[/sarcasm]
This is where the serious fun begins.
God bless you, you poor misguided fool!
This is the kind of spin being churned out by HM government and you're buying it, big time.
If the government wanted to work on reducing social security costs, the first thing they'd do is link up the NI databases with the benefits databases - believe me, they're not connected AT ALL. If you walk into a benefits agency office, you can claim you're unemployed and you will probably receive payment. They have absolutely no way of checking your income tax or NI contributions, and they usually don't investigate somebody until they receive a complaint.
Then we have the problem with identity theft. My mother-in-law is a registrar, and she is powerless to stop somebody asking for a copy of ANYBODY'S birth certificate. She hands them out to people who she KNOWS are going to use them fraudulently, but it is absolutely legal to do this in the UK, so she can't stop it. It only takes a couple of extra steps and you can gain credit cards, utility bills and an identity.
The people that want an ID card (illegal immigrants) will get one to use to their advantage. The people that don't want an ID card will be forced to carry one and it could be used to their disadvantage. Remind me again how this is useful?
I see the problem with it. I'm perfectly fine with the idea of ID cards in general (actually, as a frequent traveller within Europe I would very much like to have the ability to acquire one of these French/German style ID cards that functions as a sort of cut-down passport, principally for security reasons...) and somewhat less fine with the idea of compulsory ID cards. I'm not in the least convinced of the argument for them, other than the ability to stop random people in the street and demand to see their ID, which will result in one of a few scenarios,
1) being 'I have it, here it is' (somewhat unlikely - you can prove your identity for video rental with something called a video club card after the initial effort, for example, so there's not much incentive to carry around fourty pounds (sixty dollars, ish) worth of ID card just so some prick can hit you over the head and nick it),
2) being an honest 'I left it at home', in which case the police will have to give you a reasonable time period to go home, get it, and present it to them, thus putting you to some inconvenience for your honesty,
or 3) being a dishonest 'I left it at home', in which case the police will give you a similar grace period, and you, being not a stupid illegal immigrant/criminal/whatever, will be unlikely to go back to the police station and admit it.
And I'm totally creeped out by the idea that Blunkett and his Orwellian pals are demanding compulsory biometric registration. Biometrics isn't something to use lightly, even if it is a popular element in buzzword bingo. In summary, it could be stated that whilst, for example, EU-acceptable ID cards would be very handy, and whilst a national ID system would perhaps be a good thing - solving the 'proof of age' problem, for example - this ID card system is not really about that sort of solution. Blunkett is probably not really after making European travellers' lives easier, so much as he is after that lovely-sounding Gattaca-style database of All The Biometric Information of Every Citizen And Visitor.
I'm aware that there are arguments for the retention of biometric information. But I've worked in areas where there's an astonishing quantity of crime, and our problem has never been proving the ID of the criminal, so much as the fact that the criminals are either underage or consider themselves so far outside the law that nothing short of a prison sentence can stop them. ID is easy to establish where you have a photo or a fingerprint (this is presumably where biometric info 'helps'), and is hard to establish where you have neither and rely on witness identification or less (biometric info isn't going to help you here...) In short, unless the government were to come up with some very good reasons for force-collecting that information from every citizen, they shouldn't be permitted to go through with it. It could be harmful, it isn't much help, and given things like his fabulous extradition agreement, it is extremely hard to see why anybody would consider Blunkett an even mildly trustworthy individual.
Previously, many people in the UK have had the comforting illusion that the country, unlike certain others, did not display the 'you want human rights? Prove your entitlement first' attitude. Blunkett, (the prick), is proving otherwise. Sensibly, many people have the unsurprising opinion that Blunkett can fuck off.
"My sympathy now do like good english people always do and ignore the law."
I have to agree since people in the USA don't know how to ignore the law without getting all anal. The English have ben doing it for centuries. I have faith they will ignore this one too.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
The UK, after all, is the nation which decided to pass a law requiring you to hand over your encryption keys without due process when asked, upon penalty of jail when you fail to do so -- and it doesn't matter if you actually have the encryption keys or not.
No, this was a stupid idea by a politician. The nation disagreed with him, and so we don't have that law.
It's also the nation that puts up monitoring cameras in many public areas.
Yes, and I've yet to see, despite many knee-jerk reactions, a reasoned explanation why allowing the government to see what people are doing in a public place is such a bad idea.
Oh, and it's also the nation that supports the U.S. no matter what
Actually, our nation doesn't support the USA no matter what. Some of our politicians do, but our nation doesn't. About 1/60th of our entire population marched in London on a single day to protest the war. Tony Blair didn't listen to us, but that's one of the problems with a republic rather than a pure democracy (oh, and for all the USA talk to the contrary, they are a republic and not a pure democratic nation as well).
The U.K. seems about as close to an Orwellian society as any "enlightened" country on the planet.
What does over-zealous copyright law have to do with Orwell? Or did you just want to have a go at the UK and a bad law was the perfect excuse to do it? News for ya, kid, bad laws get passed everywhere.
We passed this law because it was our duty as part of the EU. For all the flak we got for ignoring the UN, you think we'd not get attacked for listening to everyone else this time around. Rest assured, we'll fight this, but we'll fight it in the right place - not the UK, but in the EU.
No, the real question is whether or not most of the other members of the EU will pass the EUCD. I expect they will, because they're all in the pockets of large corporations these days.
I expect they will because that's the whole point of the EU's directives. If they just get ignored, countries may as well just forget about the EU.
No, the real question is whether or not most of the other members of the EU will pass the EUCD. I expect they will, because they're all in the pockets of large corporations these days.The basic premise of New Labour was that it was better to have the Labour party in power implementing Tory policies than the Tory party.
Unfortunately, whereas the Tory party was constrained somewhat by the lack of good-will they had, their general perception of being authoritarian, "devil-take-the-hindmost," "I'm all right Jack" c***s (so to speak,) the Labour Party had so much good-will and good-feeling after their initial election win, that it clouded the fact that they were, and are, more dispicable than the Tories, and there was little restraint on their actions.
This buffer-effect is almost entirely worn through, but we don't have a viable alternative to them, other than the sheepish, timid Liberal Democrats, who have (IMO) squandered their opportunity to speak loudly and forthrightly against the nefarious policies of New Labour.
It's not that the party has a "nanny-state" mentality, I would submit, it's that it thinks of itself as our rulers, rather than our representatives (this seems increasingly common across western so-called democracies.)
I believe what we're seeing is a trend in governments across the western world in seeing just how authoritarian a government a people in a "democracy" will put up with.
I fear it will get worse before it gets better, since I think people will put up with a lot of illiberal laws and policies, so long as they don't touch key areas of their lives, enabling them to go about their day-to-day, unwilling to takle a look at how they're being herded and fenced.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
we will no longer be paying for thousands if not millions of illegals
Now we get to the racist nub of the pro- id-card crowd. Go sit in a park in Paris, and watch the local plod asking for proof of id. I'll let you guess what sort of colour they all are.
Dream ticket for racist plod.
You were already a criminal, it hasn't changed. Ripping your CD's was already an infringement: the UK has no allowance for private use. Move to Spain or another country that has have such an allowance, or lobby to have the legislation changed.
Nice idea. However the law states that you should not circumvent the system. From what I think you are saying, if RIAA download the key from a public web site where everyone else gets it from, then this is not Circumvention. However if users need to ask for the key, then it could work. If a small selected number of users (10->100) get together and use an encrypted PtoP network then no one outside the network would be able to read the data inside the network. If someone trys to circumvent the encription system, then the DMCA or EUCD could be used. I think there are applications that can do this. The one that I can think of the the one that was leaked from WinAmp's makers (AOL) under the GPL. It uses a pgp style key to encrypt all comms.
The parent wasn't insightful, it was wishful thinking. Copyright law in the UK has never allowed people the automatic right to make back-ups. Everybody does, and no-one's stupid enough to sue them for it, but technically it's only legal if the licence agreement allows for it.
How exactly were you proposing that this law would be challenged? We have no written Constitution, in the sense that the US does, so the usual mechanism for overturning silly laws across the pond is out. There's nothing inherently wrong with this law in a legal sense: what it says sucks, but it was passed by the usual means. Sure, we can hope that in time copyright law in the UK will be changed to reflect common sense (in particular, explicitly recognising various fair uses in the sense that US copyright law does) but for now, there's simply no basis in law to challenge this.
OTOH, the tinfoil hat brigade who are chanting "super-DMCA" should go and read what it actually says (and doesn't say) before getting all spooky on us.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
OK, here's a summary of the major "anti" arguments.
Basically, it comes down to three things: it won't do its job, it will be abused, and it will cost a fortune that should be spent on more important things.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
CDs don't have copy protection, they have bit errors.
"No, you just can't play copyrighted music on them. Feel free to make your own music and listen over and over and over."
Are you suggesting I can't copyright my music? Or are you saying that the copyright I put on my music is somehow a different kind of copyright than the one some media corporation puts on its music?
One law for the king, one law for the peasant.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
So now that mp3.com are going to be deleting all content from their servers and mp3s4free has been shut down or is in the process of being and p2p networks are illegal and ripping your own mp3s is illegal - HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO USE MY mp3 PLAYER?
can i go back to cassettes perhaps? or is that illegal too?
When the whole country or a very large part of it are suddenly made into outlaws the laws very obviously are wrong.
So can we expect sony and the like to withdraw mp3 players from the shelves of dixons et al? seeing as there is no official legal distributor of mp3s to play on your player?
I'd like to hear what Dixons or sony have to say about where i should get mp3s from when i purchase a player from them?
I would hope they don't incite me to break the law.
The UK law is less significant than might be thought, since in the absence of a national - UK - law, the EU law applies unmodified from its effective date.
/. could frame a suitable contract...
Not passing a law was not a useful option.
I think the parent here is unduly pessimistic, in that it isn't so much giving a reward that causes people to follow a course of action agreed in society, but their own agreement that it is proper.
In this case that agreement is largely absent, and a coercive law is going to get little effort or enthusiasm in following or enforcement.
There is a remedy to it, and that is to seek the rights to move the information of music around media and formats when one buys it.
This is perhaps a bit Monty Pythonesque for a record shop, where the assistant may not be in a position to alter the terms of the contract under which one CD is sold, but if people have the good sense, or act he same way through a sense of irritation, not to buy material under an unfavourable contract, then the sellers will get the message.
Perhaps