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UK To Finally Legalize Ripping CDs and DVDs

Posted by Soulskill on from the only-20-years-too-late dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news that the U.K. government will finally legalize the copying of data from CDs, DVDs, and other types of media for personal use. This will allow U.K. citizens to legally make backups and digital copies of their media, which has been forbidden by copyright law previously. The changes will go into effect this June. It also grants permission for people to upload the ripped media to a remote host, though sharing of course remains illegal. "The mismatch between the law and public opinion became apparent through a Government-commissioned survey, which found that 85% of consumers already thought that DVD and CD ripping was legal. More than one-third of all consumers admitted that they’d already made copies of media they purchased. Besides the new private copying rights, the upcoming amendments will also broaden people’s fair use rights. For example, people no longer have to ask permission to quote from or parody the work of others, such as a news report or a book, as long as it’s “fair dealing” and the source is recognized."

8 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. What about copy protection. by leuk_he · · Score: 4, Interesting

    DVD are still mostly copy protected by the highly ineffective CCS copy protection. blue ray are more effectively protected, but the protection still is breakable by a lot of tools.

    by european law is decided:
    "the following anti-circumventing rules were implemented in European Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the council of May 22, 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society.

    This directive states in article 6, 'Obligations as to technological measures':

            Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective.
    "

    So you may copy it, but if you break ANY technlogical measure, you an still be sued by the content mafia fpr breaking copy protection technology. So think twice before you make a guide on your homepage how to copy a dvd.

    1. Re:What about copy protection. by symbolset · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you can break it then it isn't effective and breaking it is therefore legal, eh?

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      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    2. Re:What about copy protection. by queazocotal · · Score: 3, Interesting

      By this exact same argument, many house-locks deployed are not 'security', and breaking them is therefore not a crime.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - I recommend.

      A feature being ineffectual generally does not mean that it's not relevant, unless the law specifically says that the feature must be effective against skilled attackers.

    3. Re:What about copy protection. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The new law actually takes this into account. If you buy something in a format with 'digital locks' that prevent format shifting, you may write to the Secretary of State for permission to break the locks. This will be granted, unless the same item is available in a format without digital locks. The upshot of this is that if you sell DRM-free media in the UK, then you can force people to buy a second copy to format shift (but only once), but if you don't then they can format shift whatever encumbered format they want.

      This means that breaking DRM is explicitly legal in the UK, unless the same media is available without DRM (in which case there's little reason to bother breaking the DRM - you could just buy it in a more friendly format). I'm really looking forward to the Secretary of State receiving thousands of letters a day from people asking to rip their DVDs. Don't forget: you can send one letter per DVD you own...

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Good luck by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Audio outputs temporarily muted. Do not adjust the playback volume. The content being played is protected by Cinavia and is not authorized for playback on this device. For more information, see http://www.cinavia.com./ Message Code 3."

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    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    1. Re:Good luck by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Interesting
      The torrented version up to this point had 3 ways to go with this:
      1. - Rip from bluray and tell people trying to play it on a smart appliance that detects the cinavia watermark "lol ur stewpid. Get real hardware loser" or "OMG it plays on my laptop via VLC fine. Shut up n00b."
      2. - Maim the audio stream to an unintelligible mess to the point the water mark isn't detected, but deal with the fact that you can't even tell what you are hearing most of the time
      3. - Rip the audio stream from the DVD copy and match it up with the bluray video stream

      The last was the most popular until recently where they are putting cinavia in the audio tracks of the DVDs as well now.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    2. Re:Good luck by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Most set to smart media players are shipping with Cinavia. Roku, Netgear NeoTV, now WDTV Live, to name a popular few implement Cinavia protection. Going forward it will eventually be all of them.

      I'm not even going to comment on your other "solutions".

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  3. Meanwhile back in the land of the not so free ... by Zorlon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://www.myce.com/news/break...

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    - Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -