Legally own a CD and want to burn a second copy for your car? Own a film on Blu-Ray but want to rip a copy to watch on your tablet during a plane flight? Want to extend the use of media you legally purchased for your own, private use by duplicating it? Thanks to a new UK High Court ruling, you’re now a criminal.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation puts it:
In a nutshell, the court struck down the UK government’s decision to allow users to lawfully make copies of content that they have purchased for personal use, given the absence of a compulsory levy to compensate copyright owners for the “harm” that they suffer from such copying. The government’s choices are now to remove the private copying exception—making personal copying illegal again, or to supply additional evidence that copyright owners suffer no or minimal “harm” from personal copying, or else to begin imposing a new tax on users to compensate the industry for that “harm”.
So, according to the High Court, if you want a separate copy of, say, The Balcony by Catfish and The Bottlemen, an album you already own, to listen to in your car, you are “harming” the copyright holder by not buying a second copy, despite there being no proof of lost sales due to such practices. The free copying exception that most of Europe enjoys isn’t fit for us British plebs, it seems. But not much is any more (ECHR, anyone?).
Thank you Electronic Frontier Foundation for providing us with this information.
Image courtesy of WiseGeek.
Wow these people are greedy frikkin idiots. A stunt like this will only lead to more “piracy” as I for one will do whatever the hell I please with anything I have bought (within reason of course), if I want to rip a CD onto my phone to listen to it in my car then I will, it’s my property I have paid for it I will do as I please. These sorts of decisions will just infuriate the public who will then maybe decide not to even bother purchasing content in the first place.
What about digital content?
I wonder who paid the High Court judge a back hander on this one, do you think he has connections with FIFA?
well.. i bet theres a few more using torrents from now on then.. great move ..
well that is one I am going to ignore , as long as I don’t broadcast it publically , they can go fish for it
well thats 1 way to stop people even bothering to buy 1 in the 1st place now
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Next the UK will employ tactics of having a Royal Family as a Monarchy
Imagine that…
What they’re really after is a levvy on blank media.
Once they convince the courts that they should be compensated for every copy made, but look! We’re not getting it. They want a tax on every CD, DVD, SD card, flash drive, hard drive or computer you buy from now on, just in case some copyrighted content ends up on there without them getting paid.
Are they really going to enforce this? Are people really going to care?
I sure don’t, I paid for it so I will do what I please with it, I am not distributing it.