Ripping CDs Set To Be Legalized In UK

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."

Comments

Seriously?

[Lanteran]

It was illegal in the UK? I would have thought that of all places, it would have been illegal in the US. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction I guess...

Re:Seriously?

[Ynot_82]

It is indeed currently illegal to format shift here
but it's not enforced

Under the same law it's technically "illegal" to tape something off the TV
but only in the most obvious of obvious selling-bootleg-copies-down-the-market instances is anything ever done about it

Re:Seriously?

[zandeez]

IIRC It's not illegal to tape something from the TV. It is illegal to keep that recording for more than 14 days after the original broadcast.

Re:Seriously?

[Joce640k]

Things can be illegal in more than one place at the same time.

Looks like the UK has had an outbreak of common sense.

I'm particularly amazed by the line: "...the government endorses a recent intellectual property report". WTF? Heads will be rolling around the floor of the MAFIIA offices today.

Re:Seriously?

[Tim C]

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.

Re:Seriously?

[CProgrammer98]

Step out you door, head towards a shopping mall. Within you may find something like an entertainment store (HMV/Virgin in the UK) who still continue to stock and sell a surprisingly large amount of these "CDs" containing what some would call "music"

Re:Seriously?

[Joce640k]

... find an enormous range of CDs which still sell well.

Blasphemer! Everybody knows you can only ever sell one copy of a CD these days and then piracy takes care of the rest!!

Re:Seriously?

[ewanm89]

Close that one, and youtube, vimeo, dailymotion.... would also be illegal to watch without a TV licence. We have an issue that TV licence does not work, and is even more broken when applied to the internet.

Re:Seriously?

[Kakihara]

The TV license is not broken in the sense that it exists to fund the BBC and the BBC is well-funded. Thus we have either the finest broadcaster in the world or something close to it. It's pretty sad that papers like the Daily Mail have gone to war with it because of a supposed left wing bias. It was sad that the Murdochs were so vehemently anti-BBC, but given their disgrace their opposition might now be a blessing.

But you are right in the sense that if TV becomes predominantly consumed via a pc, then it will be broken.

Re:Seriously?

[Kakihara]

Private Eye (satirical mag published in UK) used to joke that "the jury found the defendant famous."

But I think in this instance, that's not case. Monkhouse was arrested for conspiracy to defraud film companies. He was the little guy. He lost most of his collection anyway because it was seized at the outset and he would have had to establish in court his right to each film individually, at least according to his obituary in the Independent.

Re:Seriously?

[sunderland56]

Tape it with what?

"Tape" as a verb, meaning 'to record'. Doesn't need to be done on spools of magnetic oxide.

Similarly "ripping a cd" does not mean shredding it into pieces with your hands.

Re:Seriously?

[tecnico.hitos]

So you can't build an archive to release when the content becomes public domain. While it doesn't surprise me, it makes me wonder. How one should go about legally preserving content for the future? Are there initiatives dedicated to that?

Re:Seriously?

[oldmac31310]

The deep vein thrombosis from sitting in the office chair 24 hours a day makes it hard to get up the stairs from the basement you insensitive clod.

good timing

[Trepidity]

If we're finally getting around to CDs now, I guess sensible laws relating to downloaded/streamed content will be coming in around 2030.

Re:good timing

[TheRaven64]

Well, I intend to point out the innovation that DRM on DVDs has held back by comparing the proliferation of portable music players and MP3 jukebox systems to the complete lack of any equivalent for DVDs, and cite the case in the USA where a company that did produce a ripped-DVD jukebox was forced to stop selling them over DMCA violations.

Rain on the parade...

[thej1nx]

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?

Re:Rain on the parade...

[Richard_at_work]

While the extradition treaty is a bit shit, your understanding of it is far too simplistic, and that is dangerous in itself - no UK citizen has yet been extradited for carrying out something legal in the UK that is illegal in the US. All examples of usage of the extradition has been where the act has been illegal in both countries, *and* the US has been able to show that some of the act was carried out in the US.

Re:Rain on the parade...

[Joce640k]

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

Re:Rain on the parade...

[mosseh]

All examples of usage of the extradition has been where the act has been illegal in both countries, *and* the US has been able to show that some of the act was carried out in the US.

What about Richard O'Dwyer of TVShack fame? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/big-content-unveils-latest-antipiracy-weapon-extradition.ars/

The legality of linking It's not clear whether O'Dwyer has even committed a crime under UK law. O'Dwyer is not accused of hosting infringing content himself. Instead, his site provided links to content hosted by other websites. In December, a British judge ruled in favor of TV-Links, a website that, like Tvshack, offered links to video content, some of it infringing.

Re:everything similar to Audio CD or only Red Book

[pstorry]

No, we just have copyright laws that have no concept of fair use.

Therefore we can't time or format shift, can't use copyrighted material in parodies or for other works without getting permission from the copyright holder, and so forth.

Nobody ever prosecuted anyone on these issues unless it was blatantly criminal activity (e.g. selling dodgy copies on a market stall). But ignorance of the law is no excuse, and under these laws about 95% of all UK citizens are criminals. I doubt you'll find anyone alive since the 80's that hasn't copied music to tape for listening in a car/walkman, recorded something to videotape for later viewing, ripped music from a CD as an MP3/AAC file, and so forth. It's just become one of those laws that's there but nobody cares about.

I've not checked the proposed changes, but I suspect that it's a fairly broad - and long overdue - attempt to introduce a more US-like set of exceptions. I doubt that we will be allowed to legally circumvent DRM, though - that would be a step too far for the corporate lobbyists.

People are just reporting the "legal to copy a CD" thing because it's attention grabbing. Most readers will look at the headline and wonder what it's on about, as they didn't know it was illegal...

Re:Awesome that the UK legalizes format shifting.

[Joce640k]

Even more awesome is that somebody in government actually read a "recent intellectual property report" that wasn't supplied by the MAFIAA.

Re:everything similar to Audio CD or only Red Book

[xaxa]

I'm ignorant about UK laws, do you have some kind of breaking-encryption-is-verboten-law?

I didn't know, but Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 seems to be the relevant law.

IANAL. It seems to be illegal to break encryption for commercial reasons, I'm not sure about non-commercial reasons. But if the encryption prevents things you're allowed to do (so, soon format shifting...?) then there must be a way round that.

Private copy and tax

[alex67500]

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...

Re:Private copy and tax

[zzyzyx]

Actually it is an European law, and each country decides how much the tax should be. It is highest in France than in any other European country. For example, the tax on a blank DVD is 1.2€, and 20€ for a 1TB external hard drive. Nearly anything that can store audio is taxed, from audio cassettes to car GPS. It is not actually a tax in the sense that it is not contributed to the community but instead directly to the local equivalent of the RIAA. The tax amount is established by a committee composed by 50% representatives of the artists/producers/editors, 25% representatives of the media manufacturers/resellers, and 25% representatives of the consumers. In case of a tie during a vote, the president decides the vote. Until now, he has always sided with the media industry, which have consequently been able to unilaterally decide the amount of the tax. That might explain why it is so high.

Re:everything similar to Audio CD or only Red Book

[xaxa]

"But if the encryption prevents things you're allowed to do (so, soon format shifting...?) then there must be a way round that."

Not really. Being "allowed" to do something does not mean you have a right to do so. This is also a common misconception regarding the US Fair Use doctrine. Fair Use is not a right, but it is a defence you can use in a case against you.

I can't really add anything beyond just copying out the bit of the Wikipedia:

The new section 296ZE creates a remedy via complaint to the Secretary of State if a technical device or measure prevents a person or group of people from carrying out a permitted act with relation to the work. The Secretary of State may issue a direction to the owner of the copyright to take such measures as are necessary to enable the permitted act to be carried out. The breach of such a direction is actionable as a breach of statutory duty.

and the relevant section of the act.

The law itself is far too confusing.

Re:Not funding per se but the manner

[Kakihara]

That's a fair point, and one that hadn't occurred to me before so thanks. It does appear a hopelessly inefficient method of taxation. I guess the reason for the survival of the anachronism is that TV licenses are paid per property. Off-hand I can't think of any national taxes associated with property except for those associated with buying and selling it.

Libraries aren't funded from general taxation - they're currently (under-)funded by councils, and reportedly being closed en masse. If there are such things as subsidised martial arts classes for the over-60s, I imagine they too are locally funded, and likewise about to end. So perhaps the cost of instantiating a new per-property means of general taxation is prohibitive. How would it cater for tenants of rented accommodation not on the electoral roll? Policing such a system would likely be pretty expensive itself.

Perhaps the reason that alternative means of taxation haven't been pursued is that people of influence would prefer to avoid as far as possible substantial debate around the level of funding for a public broadcaster. It wasn't so long ago that James Murdoch was met with obsequious applause upon concluding a BBC-bashing speech with the words "the only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit."