At the moment, anyone in the UK who transfers music they purchased to their MP3 player, such as from CDs to an iPod may not realise that they are infringing copyright law and could be prosecuted under the current law. As a result, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is aiming to decriminalise consumers in Britain by requesting a change in the law to allow the private right to copy, since the IPPR argues that personal copying has little impact on copyright holders. Over half of consumers in the UK break copyright law as a result of some form of personal copying and thus it is nonsense having such a law that everyone breaks.
At present, the UK government is reviewing intellectual property laws and the IPPR is aiming to have an influence with its report "Public Innovation: Intellectual property in a digital age." As music is becoming more widespread as intangible assets, where music is distributed as downloads and often protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM), the report also looks at this area, since DRM affects the ability to preserve this type of content as well as affects its accessibility. As a result, the report asks to allow the British Library to have access to digital content free of DRM and be able to make more than one copy of it. Finally the report also aims to get the government to reject the UK Music Industry's attempt to extend the copyright term for recordings longer than the current 50 years.
It will be interesting to see if changes to the copyright law would have any effect. For example, even though it is currently illegal to privately transfer music from one device to another, chances are that no one has ever been prosecuted for private home copying. Then again, if the music industry did try to sue one for private copying, such as transferring their personal CD collection to an iPod, this would potentially give the UK music industry a real bad image compared to their current lawsuit campaign against file sharers.
Thanks to GristyMcFisty for letting us know about this news. More detailed info can be read at the BBC News source here.
