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British Video Recordings Act 1984 Invalid

Posted by timothy on from the slight-reprieve dept.

chrb writes "BBC News is reporting that the British Video Recordings Act 1984 is invalid due to a 25 year old legal blunder. The Thatcher government of the day failed to officially "notify" the European Commission about the law, and hence it no longer stands as a legal Act. There will now be a period of around three months before the Act can be passed again, during which time it will be entirely legal to sell any video content without age-rated certifications."

1 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. More freedom - no copyright now?! by chrb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I added this as a comment to the original submission but it didn't get picked up.

    According to The Telegraph this also means that there is now no copyright on DVDs. I'm not sure of the reasoning for this since copyright is supposed to be enforced by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but that's the legal system for you.

    So, apparently the UK is now (unwittingly) running the first national experiment in the abolition of copyright and age controls on DVDs. Should be interesting!