UK - Music groups win court battle over private copying of CDs

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Music industry organisations have won a high court battle over measures introduced by the government allowing people to lawfully copy CDs and other copyright material bought for their own private use.

 

A judge ruled that the government erred in law when it decided not to introduce a compensation scheme for songwriters, musicians and other rights holders who face losses as a result of their copyright being infringed.

 

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills stated when introducing the measures that they would cause zero or insignificant harm, making compensation unnecessary.

 

But Mr Justice Green, sitting in London, ruled that evidence relied on by the government did not justify the claim that the harm would be

[Orange Battery]

Considering they produce such rubbish now days, I would have thought they would be not worrying about us copying for backup purposes. I'm not a pirate so the more restrictions I get, the less likely I am to be interested.

[COKid]

/sigh. Tired of people not being able to comprehend what usage rights mean. You are simply purchasing the rights to use the music CD, software, etc. You don't actually "own" anything.

 

Most people who complain about the restrictions have never created intellectual property worth protecting and are ignorant to the investment in time & money required to create the products the rest of us enjoy. 

 

Granted, I do make backups of my CDs, so in some ways I am hypocrite.  But we all know for millions of people it doesn't stop there. Therein lies the real problem. The sharing.

[Stoffel]

/sigh. Tired of people not being able to comprehend what usage rights mean. You are simply purchasing the rights to use the music cd, software, etc. You don't actually "own" anything.

 

Most people who complain about the restrictions have never created intellectual property worth protecting and are ignorant to the investment in time & money required to create the products the rest of us enjoy. 

 

But what is so wrong about making a back up copy for yourself?

Rip a cd you legally bought so you can put it on your phone/music player, rip a dvd/BR so you can put it on your HTPC? 

That's what this is about

[Jim K Global Moderator]

/sigh. Tired of people not being able to comprehend what usage rights mean. You are simply purchasing the rights to use the music CD, software, etc. You don't actually "own" anything.

 

Most people who complain about the restrictions have never created intellectual property worth protecting and are ignorant to the investment in time & money required to create the products the rest of us enjoy. 

 

Granted, I do make backups of my CDs, so in some ways I am hypocrite.  But we all know for millions of people it doesn't stop there. Therein lies the real problem. The sharing.

 

 /sigh .. people who are hypocrites  It is ok for us, at least according to the RIAA, to make copies for personal use (apparently it isn't for the UK?)

 

Per the RIAA since you're posting from the USA. 

 

• Beyond that, there

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

Remember folks, Taylor Swift needs to top up her $250,000,000 bank account. So go and buy another 3 copies of her CD out of you hard earned weekly minimum wage.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Remember folks, Taylor Swift needs to top up her $250,000,000 bank account. So go and buy another 3 copies of her CD out of you hard earned weekly minimum wage.

 

Well no.  Go buy her CD, LP and then the album on iTunes

 

$250M...ugh.  Somewhat satisfying to know I haven't contributed to her net worth.

[NinjaGinger]

I buy so little music these days ( its so low quality ) it wont bother me at all what they do, unless produce less rubbish.

[Dick Montage]

And they plan to enforce this how?

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

Remember folks, Taylor Swift needs to top up her $250,000,000 bank account. So go and buy another 3 copies of her CD out of you hard earned weekly minimum wage.

 

No, her record company needs another $250,000,000, where she gets a much smaller % for herself.

[Depicus]

Another absurdity of the law where hundreds of thousands of pounds will be spent on courts and lawyers for the music moguls (probably not the artists) to make a few extra pounds at the expense of people who probably don't even buy music. A tax on phones ? or maybe anything that can play music just so some fat cat can have an extra slice. No other industry extracts so much for so little.

[Lamp0]

Therein lies the real problem. The sharing.

 

When I was a young boy I thought sharing was good, but now that I am a grown up I realize that I was wrong. Sharing is very harmful to owners of intellectual properties as it can damage their profits.

[Noir Angel]

This has nothing to do with sharing, it's about ripping stuff you've already paid for. I can't see how this is going to be enforced, or how rights groups are in any way damaged by people ripping CDs that they already paid for. This is another in the line of profiteering businesses being allowed to override common sense. And it's not going to stop people from ripping CDs either.

[trag3dy]

What'll they think of next? Disposable mp3s? Where they automatically delete themselves off your device after you listen to them your allotted 5 times?

 

Seems like the kind of things they'd go for if they could get away with it.

[Doli]

No, her record company needs another $250,000,000, where she gets a much smaller % for herself.

Her record company did invest most of the money for her to put out another album.

[GotBored]

/sigh. Tired of people not being able to comprehend what usage rights mean. You are simply purchasing the rights to use the music CD, software, etc. You don't actually "own" anything.

 

Most people who complain about the restrictions have never created intellectual property worth protecting and are ignorant to the investment in time & money required to create the products the rest of us enjoy. 

 

Granted, I do make backups of my CDs, so in some ways I am hypocrite.  But we all know for millions of people it doesn't stop there. Therein lies the real problem. The sharing.

 

You pay for the usage rights that is correct but prior to this law you could purchase the usage rights to an album and copy that album onto another CD so if you scratched or damaged your original CD you would still have usage rights to play that music on another CD. The new law now limits your usage rights to the specific media format you bought it for and then you need to repurchase if for example your CD gets scratched or otherwise damaged or if you wanted to play that on an android phone, or an apple phone, or just on a windows PC.

 

It's basically just to make more money out of people by forcing them to buy the same usage rights for a single song or album on multiple media formats and platforms (eg. CD, MP3 - iTunes, Google Play and other music stores).

 

The sharing was illegal and still is, this article has nothing to do with piracy and this new law isn't targeting pirates but legitimate buyers.

[benplace]

Who is still buying CDs?

Will this also apply to cassette tape to tape recording?

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Who is still buying CDs?

Will this also apply to cassette tape to tape recording?

 

CDs made up 32% of the sales last year (digital 37% and streaming the other 27%).  Granted, it is sinking fast with streaming services taking over both CD and digital downloads.  

 

Who buys tapes?  Do they even sell them now?

[FloatingFatMan]

And they plan to enforce this how?

 

Exactly, not only can this not be enforced, but it can't even be policed.

 

It's a complete and utter waste of time and a pointless piece of legislation. No cop is going to check your phone and demand you provide proof of ownership of any music therein.

[dragontology]

"Who still buys CDs?" Those who want to protect their rights, that's who. CDs have no copy protection, and they can't add it without violating the Red Book standards, which means it won't play. "Who still buys CDs?" is the RIAA's line. They don't want you to buy CDs. They want you to double or triple dip. They want you to pay for streaming. They love Apple for not releasing iTunes on Android. If you bought an album on iTunes, and then you got a smartphone running Android, you'd have to buy it again on Google Play (or Amazon). If you buy a CD, you buy your music once. You can then import it into iTunes or Google Music, you can play it in your car, or in anything with an optical drive. I buy CDs, because I like the physical package, and the digital copy isn't much cheaper, and I can make that myself, and do more with it.

[vanx]

It is important to realise that what the music groups won is not the complete turnaround of the legislation that the Gov have put in place. They have won an appeal to have a judicial review of that piece of legislation. Going forward, the Gov has 3 options:

 

1. The Gov can do some more research to prove why copyright holders will not suffer from this copyright exception (if successful, the law will stand).

2. It can repeal the relevant section (in which case, it will be illegal again).

3. Or it can bring out a compensation scheme.

 

Given that the copyright industry fiercely fights even the tiniest, very-unimportant types of exceptions, their challenge should come as no surprise.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

Her record company did invest most of the money for her to put out another album.

 

I don't have issue with record companies per say, however, with record industries makes money on artists decades, and the artist dies in poverty. 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

And now it is illegal to rip CDs and movies for personal use in the UK.

 

 

Making copies of copyrighted music and videos for personal use is again illegal in the UK because of a ruling by the High Court issued today.

 

Today's ruling quashes the 2014 regulation that made it legal to make personal copies of performances for private use as long as the person doing so has lawfully acquired the content and doesn't distribute it to anyone else. That regulation allowed people to make backups or play songs or movies in different formats but didn't allow selling copies or sharing them with family and friends.

 

But the High Court ruled last month that the regulation hadn't been enacted properly. The personal use exception wasn't immediately thrown out because other remedies could have been considered, but today's ruling takes it off the books.

 

"A judge ruled that the government was wrong legally when it decided not to introduce a compensation scheme for songwriters, musicians, and other rights holders who face losses as a result of their copyright being infringed," the BBC reported. The decision came "after a legal challenge from Basca, the Musicians' Union, and industry representatives UK Music."

 

UK Music, which represents record labels, songwriters, musicians, and others, hailed the High Courtfor "agree[ing] with us that Government acted unlawfully when it introduced an exception to copyright for private copying without fair compensation."

 

Before losing its case, "The UK government argued that by limiting the new exception to private copies, any harm caused to copyright holders was indeed negligible and therefore did not need to be funded

[remixedcat]

These labels are shitheads and they NO have clue what's headed thier way.Some insiders I know have told me there days are numbered.

[tompkin]

I saw the other day that James Taylor got his first #1 album for a week in the U.S.  and it only sold 96,000 copies. That tells you where the record companies are headed. They made boneheaded moves years ago.