British Secretary Vince Cable is set to announce the intent to legalize the copying of CDs and DVDs for personal use. This announcement is said to be in response to a review of the country’s intellectual property laws, done by Professor Ian Hargreaves earlier in 2011. Hargreaves review was originally requested by Prime Minister David Cameron.
Hargreaves is a professor of digital economy at Cardiff School of Journalism. When he surveyed the intellectual property laws of Britain, he found that the 300 year old copyright laws were actually standing in the way of innovation and that making some changes had the potential to add 8 billion pounds to the British economy. That translates in roughly $13 billion.
One of Hargreaves primary recommendations is to legalize what is called “format shifting” otherwise known as copying the CDs or DVDs you buy onto a personal computer or MP3 player. This is already legal in most other UK countries with Ireland, Malta, and Britain being the only exceptions.
It should be made very clear that while this enables a user to copy a CD or DVD for their own personal use, it does not permit sharing that data with others over the internet. File sharing sites are still illegal as is any type of sharing without permission from the copyright owner.
The other major recommendation that Cable is expected to announce is allowing exception to copyright for parody. That would mean that comedians could parody someone else’s work without permission from the copyright holder.
Hargreaves included other recommendations but the British government has made no comment as to whether or not it will support those. Legalizing “format shifting” and waiving permissions for parody is a nice step in the right direction to update British copyright laws.
