If The UK Wants People To 'Respect' Copyright, Outlawing Ripping CDs Is Probably Not Helping

from the you-earn-respect dept

We had two separate stories late last week about copyright issues in the UK, and it occurred to me that a followup relating one to the other might be in order. The first one, from Thursday, was about the UK's plan to try, once again, to push a new "education campaign" to teach people that "copyright is good." We've seen these campaigns pop up over and over again for decades now, and they tend to lead to complete ridicule and outright mockery. And yet, if you talk to film studio and record label execs, they continually claim that one of the most important things they need to do is to teach people to "respect" copyright through education campaigns.

My guess is they say this because an education campaign is something they can actually do, so they can make it look like they're "doing something" no matter how ineffective it will be. And, you can go back centuries and find that no education campaign has ever worked in magically making people respect anti-copying laws.

That brings us to story number two: on Friday, the UK's High Court confirmed that ripping your legally purchased CDs and DVDs to make a digital copy for personal use is no longer legal (something that the government had only "made" officially legal a few months ago). The court even left open the possibility that anyone who relied on the official change in regulations to rip their own CDs might now face punishment for doing so.

This court ruling came about after an organization run by the record labels, UK Music, challenged the legal change.

Combine these two stories, and you have to wonder what the recording industry is thinking. As Matt Schruers noted on Twitter, this latest court ruling can only serve to destroy any credibility that copyright might have held for people:

If one set out to burn up the credibility of #copyright in a single act, saying there could be liability for CD ripping just might be it.

— Matt Schruers (@MSchruers) July 18, 2015

And this is the part that legacy copyright industry extremists still don't get. You don't get respect for copyright through propaganda education campaigns. You get respect through earning it. And that means responding reasonably to things that people do. People want to rip music to make it more convenient to listen to. You should support that. You shouldn't try to make it illegal. You shouldn't sue your biggest fans. You shouldn't go after people for obviously non-commercial use of works. You shouldn't put ridiculous statutory damages on works. You shouldn't tax blank media. You shouldn't pull works down from the internet because a few seconds in the background contain some copyright-covered music. You shouldn't try to pass laws that limit free expression.

And yet, the recording industry does all of that, and then they think that a lousy (and misleading) education campaign will make people "respect" copyright? What are they thinking?

Filed Under: copyright, education, personal copying, respect, ripping, uk

UK Copyright Reform Just More Of The Same

from the nothing-new-to-see-here,-move-on dept

Over in the UK, some proposals for copyright reform have been announced, and there's not much interesting there. It takes recommendations from the infamous Gowers report, which we noted at the time was too balanced for its own good. For example, it includes an officially declared right for consumers to make personal copies (something that's worth mentioning following the recent RIAA kerfuffle), but it also puts in place an anti-circumvention clause a la the DMCA. There are, of course, huge problems with anti-circumvention rules that make it suddenly illegal to do something that is otherwise perfectly legal (like making private copies for personal use). By adding in an anti-circumvention clause, the personal copying clause is effectively meaningless, because the industry just needs to add any DRM, no matter how weak, and claim that any personal copies circumvent. The fact that the UK version of the RIAA has thrown its support behind these changes (while warning that it better not include any lessening of rights to copyright holders) should tell you all you need to know about how much actual "reform" there is in this particular attempt at copyright reform.

Filed Under: copyright reform, drm circumvention, personal copying, uk