Audio Format Shifting To Be OK'd In New Zealand

Bloodrage writes "The New Zealand government is about to define a small part of the rights assumed by the 'fair use' clause in the Copyright Act 1994. Essentially they are going to protect the consumers' rights to convert media from one format to another for personal use, making it clearly legal to transfer tracks from a commercial CD to a mix-CD, MP3 player, PDA, PC, 8-track, or tuned array of hummingbirds. NZ law already makes it clear that gifting or reselling items includes a transfer all of rights, including copyright, warantee, and licencing agreements, so providing your original is the genuine article you're not a criminal. An article in the The Dominion Post gives an outline of the responses from the recording industry and why the government is considering it. It boils down to; this is 'fair use' and don't argue, and that the government can't see how the alternative could be (affordably) enforced."

Comments

Re:New Zealand is Progressive

[tonyr60]

" New Zealand has always been surprisingly progressive when it come to technology (surprising because of the decisions of some other *cough* Australian *cough* governments"

NZ has NO association with that land mass across the Tasman Sea populated by convicts.

WTF do people from other parts of the world think we are part of Aus?

And on a side note...

[Thaidog]

..there are 22 sheep per person in New Zealand and not a damn one of them cares if it's fair use or not.