Prime Minister says Private Copying OK
From the Prime Minister’s website:
As you may be aware, in December 2005 the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced that there would be a review of the intellectual property framework in the UK, led by Andrew Gowers. The findings of this review have now been published and recommend the introduction of a private copying exception for the purposes of format shifting. This would allow individuals to copy music which they have legally bought on compact disc onto an MP3 player without infringing copyright. The Government welcomes this recommendation and is currently considering how such an exception should be created in UK law. A copy of the Gowers report can be viewed on the HM Treasury website.
This is great news, because it suggests the UK government may legalise copy-restriction circumvention software. Circumvention software is required to watch DVDs with Free Software, for example.
Of course, if such software is not outlawed, the purpose of copy restriction is defeated: if you can copy music from a disc to a digital file, and then copy that to a portable player, such as from a CD to an iPod, you can just as easily copy it to your friend’s portable player. While this would still be copyright infringement, it would be unstoppable.
Interesting times :-)
The Prime Minister says Private Copying OK by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
January 17, 2007 |
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2 Responses to “Prime Minister says Private Copying OK”
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> Of course, if such software is not outlawed, the purpose of copy restriction > is defeated: if you can copy music from a disc to a digital file…
I don’t agree. You assume that if people can do something they will, but it still remains the responsibility of the individual to respect the law whether such devices are available or not. In any case, “outlawing” such programs doesn’t make any difference. If someone can see/hear something, they can always copy it, even if that means waving a microphone about near the speakers or pointing a video camera at the screen - the only difference is that they get a slightly fuzzier copy and consider the media producers as their enemies. Ultimately, an individual decides whether to obey a law or not, which is why the law should accurately reflect reasonable and fair human behaviour; otherwise the law itself and the lawmakers lose people’s respect.
Outlawing such programs makes a big difference, because it keeps their functionality only available to a secret underground elite. This company is about bringing such expert knowledge to the hands of everyone else. That can’t happen if the whole subject has been illegalised - it will only happen in the underground, and everyone else will lose out.
The law is not an authority on ethics; it is, at best, an attempt to achieve justice. Since everyone understands that sharing is good, they break agreements not to share. This is bad, but it is better than not sharing. So everyone shares, and as this happens to break the law at the moment, eventually the law will change.