Government Changes Mind – Ripping CD’s Now Illegal Again

Left Right Left Right, the government doesn’t quite seem to have a solid stance on the process of ripping your albums and movies. After being made legal last year, it would seem that the high court has once again ruled it should be illegal to copy a CD for whatever purposes.

The ruling last year stated that you could make a copy of CD for purposes such as a backup, or copy the music to an MP3 player or another such device (yes that’s right, it’s been illegal all along). You could do this as long as the original media (cd, film, ext..) had been acquired legally and that you didn’t share the content with anyone else.

The change in policy has been seen as a great move by UKMusic, who represent musicians, songwriters and others involved in the musical industry. In a statement, they said that the “Government acted unlawfully when it introduced an exception to copyright for private copying without fair compensation”.

An alternative plan to replace the funds lost by you copying that album from a CD to an MP3 would have been for MP3’s, CD’s, Blu-Rays and DVD’s to have a special tax put on them, with the funds going to the music and movie industries.

So if I’m understanding this right, because you buy a CD (therefore supporting the music industry and the company which produced it) you shouldn’t be allowed to copy that music to a backup disk for when the original breaks or even to your iPod or MP3. Seems to me like companies just don’t want people buying the CD’s anymore, because if it’s deemed illegal to do so and they start acting on it, people will stop buying physical copies and then we will no doubt see complaints about their lack of CD sales being negatively impacted.

Thank you Ars Technica or the information.

Image courtesy of DuplicationCentre.