Slashdot Mirror
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."
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--
I think Gardiner's argument holds perfect ground. You personally may not take advantage of the benefits of digital media, but I use them to the fullest extent possible. All of my CDs are archived in OGG/MP3 for streaming across the network, and possibly burned to CD hundreds at a time for listening to in the car on the MP3/CD player. How can this justifiably be considered illegal? The legal system doesn't work by banning everything that could lead to a crime (until now?).
If they simply stopped buying instead of illegally copying we wouldn't have this mess.
So the illegal file sharing of music has countered the market correction expected by the music industries reported losses? How does that work? A few high profile suits against college kids doesn't even begin to recoup for the losses they are claiming.
Which is actually quite amusing, since Sony are still selling their NetMD minidisc walkmans (walkmen?) in the UK. In case you aren't aware of it these devices come with software that allows you to rip CDs or convert mp3s, wma or wav to ATRAC3 to write to minidisc via usb. As far as I have been able to find, there are no warnings in the manual about ripping CDs or writing downloaded mp3s (indeed the manual actually says "You can record audio data to your computer from sources such as audio CDs and the Internet... You can transfer audio data stored in your computer to an MD").
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.
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.