Good news everybody! The UK is taking steps towards refining their copyright law, publishing new exceptions to their current set of regulations.
At play is new language which makes personal use copying way less illegal than it was before, and brings intellectual property law overseas into the 21st century. From the GOV.UK press release:
The changes make small but important reforms to UK copyright law and aim to end the current situation where minor and reasonable acts of copying which benefit consumers, society and the economy are unlawful. They also remove a range of unnecessary rules and regulations from the statute book in line with the government’s aim to reduce regulation.
The government has consulted extensively on these changes and on the draft legislation, and listened carefully to the views of a wide range of stakeholders. As a result of this process, the legislation published today strikes an important balance between enabling reasonable use of copyright material in the modern age with minimal impact on copyright owners.
Making personal use expressly clear could help clear up some of the legal grey area surround digital media duplication. Obviously this changes almost nothing in regards to distribution of copied files and file sharing.
Here in the USA, there’s often confusion as to whether personal copies are legal. Thanks to the DMCA, often the resulting copy is legal, but any methods used to circumvent copy protection are illegal. It would be nice if we could get similar clarification here as well, so hopefully this sets some kind of precedent for future negotiations with the RIAA and MPAA.
Changes to IP law should go into effect on June 1st. More info on the GOV.UK press release site.