A change in UK copyright law could revolutionise, well, nothing really. But it would mean millions of music fans who currently infringe copyrights on a very regular basis would no longer be on the wrong side of the law. The proposed law change would end that bit of copyright law that says you infringe a record label's copyright when you rip a track off a CD you have legitimately bought so that you can listen to it on your PC or MP3 player. Or when you make a back up copy of a CD, perhaps for use in the car.
Intellectual Property Minister Lord Triesman is proposing the changes to the UK's Copyright, Designs And Patent Act, which would stop so called private copying from being illegal. The change would, obviously, be limited to personal private copies, and would not legalise the making of copies of recordings for other people, or for sharing via the net, both of which would still amount to infringement.
The changes received a cautious welcome from the UK record industry, who recognise the private copying rules are outdated, but who fear a change in the law may be misinterpreted as a sanctioning of P2P file sharing, and some of whom want a private copy levy like that that exists elsewhere in Europe (charged on blank recordables like tapes and CDRs) to be considered as part of the law review. The post-Gowers recommendations will undergo public consultation until 8 Apr.
In related news, the Washington Post has said it got it wrong when it accused the Recording Industry Association Of America of saying private copying was illegal there. As previously reported, late last year an RIAA lawyer involved in a P2P action seemed to imply that the trade association believed the making of a private copy of a track to be illegal under US copyright law.
While American law is somewhat confusing on this point, arguably private copies are allowed under so called 'fair use' exemptions to infringement rules (something we failed to point out when we last reported on this story - but something several of the copyright law fans out there in CMU land were keen to point out to us!). That, coupled with the fact the RIAA had said it wasn't concerned with private copying in the famous MGM v Grokster case back in 2005, made the latest statement from the RIAA newsworthy, and after much debate in blog land the Post picked up on the seeming change of heart from the trade body.
But the RIAA has claimed their lawyer's comments have been misunderstood and that they never said the defendant in the P2P case had acted illegally by making private copies, but that the illegal act was sharing those files via a P2P network. The Post initially argued that that wasn't what the RIAA had said, but this week accepted there had been a misunderstanding, and the trade body had not been inconsistent in its copyright statements. The trade body responded thus: "We appreciate that the Washington Post cleared the record".