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22 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+38"The new alteration would make format changes perfectly legal and acceptable, so copying CDs to MP3 format to back-up your music or play it on your iPod would be ok."
It's about bloody time ! - DoodlesMcPooh, on 10/12/2007, -5/+39No extension of copyright from 50 years either! That is good news.
All we need now to to get rid of DRM.
Please can all UK users sign this petition to the government to bad DRM
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/bandrm/
I know I am spamming it but its for a good cause! - chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24Now I can copy my CDs because 'the man' says it's ok.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18If you can change the format of CD's to MP3, then surely it would be OK to change the format of DVD's to say DivX? And the copying of any other digital media for personal use.
- maiku00, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17what is this? legislation that is tailored towards what is right and the people? not for big business and lobbyists? I think... huh? brain... brain... dying...
- CarzorStelatis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13First of all, piracy != copyright infringement. Secondly, it is not 'a new version of fair use', because the UK has never had a fair use doctrine.
- josegutz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Finally! YES! The Brits got it right...A model that the States should follow.
- chedabob, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12New copyright laws, eh?
Like those are gonna stop us... - SillyBrit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8*up* to 10 years.
Mr Dodgy Geezer flogging 1,000 discs a month out of his garage would fall into this category. You have to consider the big picture of the scale of offences this has to cover.
The person that shares a few tracks on bit torrent etc would still most likely get a fine.
They're simply saying they *can* go up to that. The sentencing guidelines would (as always) reflect this. - Tainek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This is excellent news, but the main thing is, even if we are allowed to convert it to whatever we want, its not much help if the media industry keeps locking everything down
the day i can buy a movie, rip it into whatever format i want and put it onto my mythtv box, with no resistance is the day i actually start buying content again - pirilampo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7But wait...
"To balance this, the law is much more stringent on actual distribution of that digital content. Piracy would be defined as an act of intentional distribution (or receipt of), and would carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years. In order to help enforce this, the report recommends budgeting an extra £5 million for Trading Standards officers to devote to piracy."
There's no balance here. 10 years? They're insane. - 15charmaxwtf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6As much as I hate DRM... At least no one is forced to buy DRMed music. So, banning DRM is worse than DRM because this would force producers using DRM to stop using it.
It is like petitioning the government to ban a film. No one is forced to watch the film, but some do-gooders try and get the government to force the creators to stop selling it.
No one owes you music without DRM, either buy it or don't buy it, it's that simple.
Last I heard, two wrongs don't make a right. - maiku00, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4isnt it sad how suprising is is when something like this is done the way it obviously should be?
- Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's almost surreal to think that they actually try to build some sense into their laws. And of course, changing the media format should be allowed if not only to not allow media formats to be a way for companies to combat competition, although I wonder how that legal right would conflict with the DMCA (or the EUCD for EUsians). Would re-encoding a DRM'ed format to mp3 be a violation of this, because a side effect would be removal of copy protection?
This legal jungle that just keeps growing thicker is kind of annoying to put it mildly, especially since the burden of informing oneself always lies on the user. :-( - kevincannon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm willing to bet you have no idea how much companies spend on tackling piracy and how much they lose on piracy either.
- immrlizard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It is amazing that company will go to such lengths to protect against piracy. I would be willing to bet that the money the company wastes trying to prevent it actually is more then the actual loss to piracy. Lets use sony as an example.
- Akyan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sign this petition instead it is far more generic, and actually provides what everyone wants, to be able to format shift, and true free use:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/privatecopy/ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wait a minute....when was the last time you saw, or heard of someone in the UK actually getting arrested for breaking the law by dumping tunes onto their ipod, or by making a copy of a cd to play in their car.....even to give to their mates, to be honest. Please correct me if i'm wrong..... and if you can think of ONE time, ever.......
This just looks to me like a way to bring in some super cerial, hardcore penalties for file sharing.......
Ten years in the clink!?
Those 'happy slappers' that kicked that guy to death got something like seven years, and parole on four.
The UK has got an extreme problem with overlegislation.
Some people like to say 'nanny state'..... I'm just merely gonna say that the people in power are a bunch of 'cockends'. - Burritovision, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i heart freedom of information
- kag9000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The trouble with the wider aspect of UK law, without a proper constitution is that people in authority get to decide what is 'reasonable'. What is not considered reasonable today may become reasonable tomorrow.
Then again what is reasonable now, a man recently got sentenced to life in prison (40 years) for being a thought crime, fantasist terrorist.
Fair use is not a done deal yet, the industry are fighting it, so will it get through? Probably not, it just looks to me like more New Labour spin to bring in yet another authoritarian law. - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Funny how you can get piracy and privacy mixed up at a glance. But I realized that the UK which has monitoring cameras readily trained on their citizens wouldn't be creating privacy rules.
Anyways, its a good step to finally realize that in this digital era I should have the right to format my content in any way I want as long as I am the person using the content and not attempting to profit from the content. Just that people have been ripping CD's to digital files for over a decade so I can't understand why government is finally getting around to legalizing this.
When it comes to piracy simply keep the idea of distributing copies illegal, period. DRM is just a lame attempt to force anti-copying on the average person. It fails utterly. Just focus on charging blatant copyright infringers, like those that resell copied CD's and DVD's on the street corners for $2 or P2P providers with massive amounts of illegal content, and stop trying to force every citizen to obey the law.
The UK is taking steps in the right direction, but then, they are looking to create laws that put digital speed governors on cars to FORCE people to drive the speed limit. One step forwards, two steps back. - TKardinal, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Respectfully, piracy and copyright infringement are both subsets of the same thing: theft. So while they may be different in the details, both accomplish the same thing; stealing someone else's intellectual property.
That said, I'm wholly in favor of a copyright law reform that puts reasonable liimts on IP time-wise (50 years sounds good, but I'd be okay with 25 as well), and gaurantees the right to "Fair Use" and format conversion as long as it's not distributed.
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