UK Legalizes CD Ripping, Cloud Backups And Other Stuff Today

[Ernesto]

To most consumers it’s common sense that they can make a backup copy of media they own, but in the UK this has been illegal until today.

After consulting various stakeholders the Government decided that it would be in the best interests of consumers to legalize copying for personal use.

Earlier this year the UK Intellectual Property Office announced that the changes would go into effect in June. However, when June came around the most crucial changes were still pending Parliamentary approval.

These final issues were resolved this summer and after a brief delay private copying is now legal.

This means that people are now free to make copies of DVDs, CDs and other types of media, as long as they’re for personal use. In addition, it’s no longer copyright-infringing to store copies of legally purchased media to the cloud.

The amendments also lift the restrictions on time-shifting. That is, the public is not allowed to record TV and radio broadcasts to play them back at a more convenient time. As with the other changes, this can only be done for personal use.

“These changes are going to bring our IP laws into the 21st century,” IP Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe says commenting on the changes. “They will mean that the UK IP regime will now be responsive to the modern business environment and more flexible for consumers.”

The changes aim to fix the mismatch between the law and public opinion. A Government-commissioned survey previously found that 85% of consumers believed that DVD and CD ripping was legal already, while more than one-third of all consumers admitted that they’d 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.

For the public the amendments are certainly a welcome change from the more restrictive copyright laws that were previously in place. For those who are interested, a full overview of the upcoming changes is available here.

Originally Published: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 08:13:54 +0000
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[Mike]

Five years ago, Techdirt reported that a request to the UK government to provide a copyright exception for mashups was rejected. Since then, we've been reporting on the UK's very slow progress in updating its copyright laws by bringing in various changes and exceptions. An article in the Daily Telegraph points out that there is a big problem with the new exception for parody, caricature or pastiche (found via @copyrightgirl):

Under a new exception to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998, which comes into force on Wednesday, people will be allowed to re-use copyright material "for the purposes of parody, caricature or pastiche" without having to ask permission of the original author first.

There is an important caveat. If a parodist is taken to court, it will be up to a judge to decide whether the disputed parody is sufficiently funny.

A document from the UK government explains (pdf):

In broad terms, parody imitates a work for humorous or satirical effect, commenting on the original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target.

Leaving aside the fact that judges tend to be somewhat advanced in years, and are therefore likely to have a very different idea from young creative artists of what "funny" means, there is also the point that this narrow definition excludes a huge class of mashups that aren't even intended to be funny, just creative. As Mike pointed out recently in his article on Kutiman, it's all too easy for this brilliant use of elements taken from elsewhere to be seen as "infringing." The fact that the UK's exceptions do not permit such kinds of originality shows how much its new copyright is still stuck in the past.

Originally Published: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 15:14:41 GMT
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