Rich Fiscus
9 Jan 2008 0:23
Members of the U.K. Parliament spent much of today discussing a document outlining some changes to copyright law. While many of the items discussed involved codifying existing caselaw into written law, perhaps the most interesting issue discussed was that of consumers making copies of legally purchased media, such as CDs.
Today's consultation, which included the presentation of a paper by Parliamentary Undersecretary for Intellectual Property And Quality Lord Triesman, was foreshadowed a few months ago when Parliament took up the issue of copyright term extensions. At that time there were already discussions regarding the changes discussed on Tuesday.
The copying issue, called format shifting in reference to the common practice of encoding CD audio to MP3 format, is one of the most hotly debated topics in the music industry right now. While consumers feel it should be there right to make as many copies of (legally purchased) music as they want, representatives of the recording industry are less enthusiastic about the idea.
Geoff Taylor, CEO of the U.K. equivalent of the RIAA - the BPI, noted the industry's dissapointment that the government is considering additional consumer rights with no additional compensation for copyright holders. Lord Triesman doesn't agree. In his presentation today he specifically mentioned that it doesn't make sense to pay multiple times for the same content simply to listen to it in a different setting.
The issue of DRM was also discussed, with the Lord Triesman's paper recommending that current prohibition on bypassing copy protection measures remain in place. There will be some time to think about this before the legislation is subject to another consultation before being voted on, which is expected to be some time in 2009. Among the issues to be decided are whether the proposed rights would apply only to music and movies, or whether it should be applied to other products like books.
Source: The Register