Back in June, the United Kingdom outlined new copyright rules that would allow citizens to make backups of their music, movies, and e-books. Previously, making copies of media was illegal.
Today, those laws officially go into effect.It is, however, still illegal to share those backups with friends or family, and making copies of rented media, or media that a person pays a subscription for (like Rdio or Netflix), likewise remains illegal. Media consumers are allowed to change formats—burning MP3s on a CD, for instance—but media vendors are allowed to use all kinds of DRM to keep users from doing just that (like Amazon does with its e-books, for example). Also, consumers are not allowed to resell an original copy if they keep the duplicates of it.
New rules on using copyrighted works for parody also came into effect in the UK today. According to a press release from the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills, the new rules allow exceptions to copyright for parody, caricature, and pastiche, and include improvements to rules on how you can use quotations. “This will allow the limited use of copyright material without the permission of the copyright holder, but only to the extent that the use is fair and proportionate,” the press release said. “The aim of these reforms is to support the reasonable use of creative content, without undermining copyright’s important role in supporting the creative industries.”
The BBC notes that the change does not come with any extra compensation for content creators. In other countries, easing of copyright rules have sometimes come with a tax levied on content, which is then passed back to the creators.
Back in 2010, Ars reported that UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that he admired the US' relatively lax fair use laws and admitted that the UK's strict copyright rules might have played a part in stunting Internet innovation in that country.
reader comments
59