More on that--don,t call me a moron!

There has a petition setup on the UK Prime Minister's website, requesting to amend the copyright law in order to give consumers the right to make private a private copy of copyrighted works for personal use. As many UK users may already know, simply transferring the contents of a legally purchased music CD to an iPod, PC or any other medium is in breach of copyright law. So now, this petition aims to have the law amended to allow for this, particularly since the vast majority of MP3 player owners would have already breached it multiple times. This petition has already enough signatures to place it in the top five petitions at present on the website, thus showing there is significant public interest that also would like this change put through.

Thanks to Nila for writing in with the following news:

For all of you in the UK interested in copying your music onto your portable media player, I strongly advise going to the following URL: http://petition(...)uk/privatecopy/

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In Britain, anyone who has copied music they purchased for their own personal use such as to an iPod has been technically guilty of copyright infringement. With consumers ditching their portable CD players for iPods and other personal MP3 players, it is clear that consumers must copy their CDs to their MP3 players in order to listen to their bought CDs on the move and thus the British Phonograph Industry announced that it will not go after consumers who make copies of their music so long as it is strictly for personal use only. The BPI chairman Peter Jamieson admitted that the copying of purchased music CDs to iPods and other MP3 players is widespread and he does not see this as a problem, so long as consumers do not make copies available to third parties.

The record industry is also interested in extending the copyright term for sound recordings from 50 years to 95 years as they claim the shorter 50 year period discriminates against the recording artists, not to mention the export industries. The BPI is also pushing for Apple to opt for interoperability, since at this time only an iPod can play music purchased from iTunes and the iPod cannot play music purchased from other legal music download services such as Napster.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has said it won't pursue consumers who copy music from their CDs to listen to on portable music players.

Giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media & Sport inquiry into New Media and the Creative Industries yesterday, the trade body said it didn't consider copying to different devices a problem as long as it was solely for personal use.

UK consumers who rip CDs they have bought in order to fill an iPod or other MP3 player are technically guilty of copyright infringement. The BPI didn't say how it would collar any consumer transferring music from paid for CDs to other devices, but its chairman Peter Jamieson admitted this activity is widespread.

As music delivered by music download services do not incur the costs of producing CDs, jewel cases, booklets, warehousing, shipment and so on, it seems strange for the Managing Director of Independent Records to reveal that the cost of distributing music as digital downloads is actually higher than by CDs. With the music industry getting well over half the price paid per iTunes song, it seems that their distribution cost is based on something else, such as not being able to charge as high price as they would like per song compared with CD versions.

Source: Computer Act!ve
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.Despite all the new laws being proposed aimed to further tackle piracy or lockdown devices , there is a new bill (Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act) being introduced that aims to fight back that would allow consumers to make personal copies of their digital content such as music, video, E-books and so on to what every equipment they want for personal use only. This bill amends the 1998 DMCA legislation, which currently prohibits the circumvention of copy-protection measures such as that used on Video-DVD and other protected content.



This new law would entitle the user to get around any copy-protection locks so long as the user is doing this within fair use of the product and does not infringe its copyright. As expected the MPAA are reluctant to allow any change to the DMCA that would entitle users to make even personal copies of protected content. The MPAA claim that the copyright law does not give the right to make backup copies of motion pictures. They said that if consumers were able to make even a backup copy, there would be no way of stopping them from taking this 'backup' to a friend's house, distributing it or reselling it.



The MPAA claims that it is in the consumer's best interest that digital copy-protection locks cannot be bypassed; otherwise it could turn out like the situation inChina where movies are heavily pirated. Boucher has been trying for two years to get support for the bill claiming that it will benefit the consumers and even the reluctant content creators. A hearing on this bill is expected to take place on Wednesday. Thanks to Feslmogh for submitting the following news via our news submit :

Some lawmakers are introducing a bill that Hollywood is not happy about '� one that would allow consumers to make personal copies of digital entertainment like DVDs to be played on whatever device they want.

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., author of the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, says consumers should not always have to worry about being slapped with a lawsuit every time they make a copy of their favorite videos.

"We are seeking to empower the purchasers of digital media so that they can use the media in ways that are more convenient to them," Boucher told Foxnews.com.

Boucher said that empowerment would mean "for example, by being able to move digital material '� whether it's video on a DVD or materials on a compact disc or the text of an electronic book '� around from digital device to digital device in their home or in their extended personal environment."

The new bill amends the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which allowed copyright holders to put digital locks on their work and makes it illegal to break those locks.

Boucher's bill allows owners of DVDs and other works that have a digital lock to bypass the security and copy the work so long as the user is engaging in "fair use" of the product and not infringing upon its copyright.

A hearing on the bill has been tentatively scheduled for Wednesday.

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. French customers of DVD movies are not entitled to make personal copies of their DVDs after France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation in Paris ruled against a lower court decision that prohibited the use of DVD copy protection measures. According to the layer, when one buys a DVD, they are just buying the right to use that one DVD. This judgement comes as French lawmakers, music labels, movie publishers and lobbists aim to make a balance between copyright protection and consumer rights and is also expected to affect the laws regulating the music industry.

Back in April 2004, the Paris Court of Appeal prohibited the use of DVD based copy protection systems after a member of the UFC Que Choisir consumer association had argued that the Vivendi's Studio Canal film-protection did not have the right to put measures on their DVDs to stop copying. Until now, this meant that movie and record labels would have been more likely to face legal action if they used DRM, such as when Warner was fined for using DRM measures on their audio CDs. Now, it looks like it is victory once again for the movie companies and potentially the music labels also.
PARIS French consumers are not entitled to make personal copies of DVDs, even if they do not distribute them, France's highest court said Wednesday in a victory for film companies like Vivendi Universal.

The Cour de Cassation in Paris, quashing a decision by a lower court, ruled that a consumer could not make a backup copy of David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive." The purchaser, a member of the UFC Que Choisir consumer association, had argued that Vivendi's Studio Canal film-production unit did not have the right to use a device that made it impossible to burn duplicate digital video discs.

This high court ruling is obvious bad news for consumers and potentially companies that sells products in France that circumvents anti-copy measures on DVDs. For example, this ruling effectively means that French consumers are also not entitled to copy their DVD's contents to portable media players. As this ruling could potentially affect laws relating other forms of media such as music, it could also result in legal issues doing something as simple as copying the contents of a CD to an iPod or any other portable audio player for personal use.