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Ripping CDs Set To Be Legalized In UK

Posted by Soulskill on from the about-bloody-time dept.

nk497 writes "The UK is finally set to legalize format shifting, making it legal for the first time to rip songs or films from CDs and DVDs. Ripping is technically illegal under copyright protection laws, despite most industry lobbyists agreeing it was time for a change. The rules look set to be modernized as the government endorses a recent intellectual property report, which also called for the government to ditch plans to require ISPs to block illegal file-sharing sites without a court order."

4 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Rain on the parade... by thej1nx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Okay, I am curious. How does this matter in the long run? As per the US-UK extradition treaty, US laws trump UK laws anyways. If it is illegal in USA, a UK citizen can get arrested and extradited regardless. And considering the kind of laws RIAA/MPAA lobbying has managed to get passed("economic terrorism"), it will be eventually illegal, once RIAA does gets around to getting a rider attached to some important bill to get fair-use rights eroded. And at that point, the treaty means that it will be illegal in UK as well for all practical purposes automatically. Or am I misinterpreting this somehow?

    1. Re:Rain on the parade... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They're talking about repealing the extradition treaty as well (cite).

      The treaty was originally only for "terrorists" but as usual the USA has been abusing it for their own purposes

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  2. Private copy and tax by alex67500 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In France, private copy was always legal, but the fact that it stayed legal for so long is because "private copy tax" was introduced on all storage media (blank CDs/DVDs, memory cards, hard drives). This tax is per MB, and has never been updated, which means that you sometimes pay more tax on a new hard drive than the drive is worth.

    Hopefully it won't get like that in the UK...

  3. Re:Seriously? by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Under the same law it's technically "illegal" to tape something off the TV

    No it is not; in fact time-shifting is explicitly listed as an exception in the law. For example, see section 8 of this page. What is illegal is recording broadcasts in order to build up a library of recordings (i.e. you can't keep the recordings forever), but time-shifting is definitely not illegal.

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