BBC NEWS | UK | Copying own CDs ’should be legal’

This, of course is commonsense. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in England is calling for a “private right to copy”, in other words “fairplay” usage of legally held music.

Copyright issues have, in the past, been steered too much by the music industry, the report said.

“But it is not the music industry’s job to decide what rights consumers have that is the job of government.”

According to research from the National Consumer Council, more than half of British consumers are infringing copyright law by copying CDs onto their computers, iPods or other MP3 players.

The report looks at how Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies - which restrict the sharing of music or other intellectual property - are affecting attempts to preserve electronic content.

It argues that the British Library should be given a DRM-free copy of any new digital work and that libraries should be able to take more than one copy of digital work.

A link to the report is available here.

The is exactly what Digital Rights Ireland has been educating people and policy makers about.

What is the point of having a ridiculous law, when (in Ireland) I would expect a higher percentage than in the UK, copies their legally held CDs onto their mp3 players.

[tags]runningwithbulls , digital rights ireland , fairplay , music , music law , entertainment [/tags]