Australians Allowed to Format Shift Media

An anonymous reader writes "Australian Federal law will now allow format shifting of media (ie:Ripping CDs to MP3s). Something long allowed under US copyright legislation, but only now coming to the Land Down Under." From the article: "Once the new laws are passed, 'format shifting' of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal. The new laws will also make it legal for people to tape television and radio programs for playback later, a practice currently prohibited although millions of people regularly do it. Under the current regime, millions of households a day are breaking the law when they tape a show and watch it at another time."

Comments

It's about time.

[Arghdee]

Now I can use my iPod with more than just the free downloads from iTMS!

Um...

[St0rmwarden]

"Once the new laws are passed, 'format shifting' of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal."

Hands up if you can read your newspaper on your MP3 player...

Re:Um...

[gEvil (beta)]

I don't know about you, but every morning I make a recording of myself reading the articles from the newspaper. I then convert these to mp3s and load them up on my iPod. This allows me to listen to the news for the day on my way to work.

Does that mean...

[zblack_eagle]

Does that mean that I can format shift it from the internet to my HDD? :P

Australia!

[Inoshiro]

"Under the current regime, millions of households a day are breaking the law when they tape a show and watch it at another time."

Imagine that, an entire nation composed of criminals!

I guess it's true; history repeats itself.

Re:Australia!

[GaryPatterson]

That's a bootable offence, saying that.

I'll tell Johnno, the Prime Minister, that you're out there on this Intarweb thing next time I see him down the pub. He'll tear you a new arsehole pretty quick smart with that boot of his.

MOD PARENT DOWN!

[Anonymous Coward]

Old, tired joke that isn't funny at all.

Australia is a nation of criminals! America is a nation of Puritans! LOLOLOLOL!!!!

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!

[cammoblammo]

Call that a joke? THIS is a joke...

Re:Vegemite

[Anonymous Coward]

(its only nasty when you use it like other spreads)

Yeah, like when put it on bread and eat it. As long as it stays in the jar, it's OK.

Re:America is still worse, right?

[grammar fascist]

No, I'm more questioning whether America is currently better, but headed rapidly in the wrong direction, while Australia is currently worse, but at least headed in the right direction. More of a cautionary statement than a value judgement per se.

In other, geekier words, he's asking about the first derivative value rather than the function value: f'(t) rather than f(t).

Personally, I'm more concerned with f''(t). I have a friend that wants to know f'''(t). If we put them all together we'd have a 3rd-order Taylor series expansion, with which we might approximate America's goodness with regards to copyright law at f(t+10) with reasonable accuracy. Wicked.

I'm sure you'd be satisfied with a first-order approximation, though. That'll do in the short run.

Yes, I'm a grad student. It's just sick what it's done to my mind, isn't it?

Re:Isn't is supposed to be legal?

[cammoblammo]

Home taping is illegal and it's killing music

I had a giggle reading that, and then I turned on the radio.

I think they were right.

Couldn't resist.

[Kadin2048]

If f'' is positive, but f' is large and negative, f could be nearing a singularity in the complex plane.

I think in that case, you're pretty much f'ed.