UK Government to legalise CD Ripping

The UK government was today expected to abolish laws preventing UK consumers from making digital copies of their own CDs and DVDs for personal use.

The change to the nations outdated copyright law, which stops you from converting a music CD to MP3, for instance. In a review of all of the UK copyright law by Ian Hargreaves, he suggested that legalising CD and DVD copying for personal use, commonly referred to as format shifting, would “enhance the economic potential of the UK’s creative industries” and “ensure that the emergence of high technology business, especially smaller businesses, in other sectors are not impeded by our IP laws”. While he is certainly right, it might just be 2/3 years too late.

In agreement with the review, Mr Cable, business secretary, is expected to argue the case that millions of people have been carrying out format shifting, or CD ripping, without any knowledge of having broken the law, and as such the law is somewhat pointless and needs to be updated, to bring the UK in line with the digital age.

While the legalising of CD and DVD copying for personal use is expected to go through, which would include making it legal for consumers to make copies of purchased content for ‘other family members to use’, sharing digital copies over the Internet would remain illegal.

There are many other Copyright laws open for debate and the UK will certainly benefit from a few of these being legalised.