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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."
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
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...
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...
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
No sig today...
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.
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.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
... 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!!
No sig today...