BPI lobbies for fair use copying rights
After the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) last week the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) are the latest organisation to jump on what’s fast becoming a bandwagon of support for fair use copying rights. Taking a slightly different tack the BPI have suggested that fair use could be allowed via an authorization granted by rights holders rather than through a change in the law. The BPI have already announced that they won’t prosecute anyone for copying music from e.g. a CD to an MP3 player.
Whilst authorization would in a practical sense get rid of the problem there are a number of issues that it doesn’t solve. The first issue is constitutional, as Kay Withers of the IPPR put it “It’s good that the BPI have said they’re not going to prosecute but it should be the government deciding what the consumers and citizens rights are, rather than citizens.” The second issue is the question of whether and how this authorization can be granted retrospectively, I don’t see how changes to the licensing of CDs that have already been sold can be enacted without contacting all rights holders involved which would clearly be a mammoth task. The third issue is ‘future-proofing’, the BPI only speak on issues concerning music but the legality of personal copies of DVDs (and who knows what else in the long term) is also in question. All these problems can be solved by the government enshrining in law the right of UK citizens to make reasonable use of works protected by copyright.
As a bleak side-note - whilst I was writing this post it occurred to me that after the changes brought about by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which made all offences arrestable you could, presumably, be arrested, DNA sampled etc. for carrying an iPod that had music stored on that you’d ripped from your own CDs. Just something to think about.
Via Out-Law.com.