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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."

11 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... I can rip my music CDs and play them on my Diamond Rio MP3 player.

  2. Grrr... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But what about those of us who want to rip Betamax, Casettes, Grammerphone Records and VHS?

  3. 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 ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sorry, but CSS isn't a copy protection technology of any kind. It's easily defeated within a matter of seconds on any modern PC. Legally, sure, but then if you're allowed to make an archive copy, that's your legal "right" and the industry would have to take you to court to decide which wins, and it will be expensive and (potentially) catastrophic for them to try it.

      What pisses me off ten times more is the "unreadable sectors" copy protection. It means that I've never watched a DVD on my laptop as all the ones I've tried have that shit and even with properly licensed DVD playing software and a DVD compliant drive, I can't watch it.

      So what do I do? I run it through one of the programs that just sucks the data off and ignore the errors, which leaves me with only "CSS" to defeat and half the time it's not worth the bother - leave it on, let the player worry about it and 99% of the time I only ever play from European region anyway so it doesn't hinder things to use something set in European region for CSS decryption.

      To be honest the things that piss me off go in the order:

      - Unreadable sectors
      - Blocked UOPS
      - Too much shit on the beginning of the movie (sometimes MINUTES before you can even get to the main menu).
      - The law about making a backup of a product I have in my hands for my own, personal, reasonable usage (so I don't wear my discs out and have easy access to the content).
      - CSS

    2. Re:What about copy protection. by Z34107 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You should stop giving them money. Besides the inherent silliness in paying for a product you know to be broken, you're also financing the next ACTA or TPP.

      Buying DVDs is donating to the Taliban of copyright law.

      --
      DATABASE WOW WOW
    3. 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.
    4. 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
  4. 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."

    --

    "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 AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Cinavia is usually only used on the North American release of movies, so as long as you rip from a clean source (e.g. European release) you are fine. I have modern equipment that allegedly supports Cinavia and have not had playback issues with torrents. As usual the pirate version is better quality than the paid one.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  5. Meanwhile back in the land of the not so free ... by Zorlon · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

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