UK Citizens No Longer Allowed to Transfer Their Own Media

Imagine that every time you wanted listen to a song you had to rebuy it. You could never listen to a track without shelling out a small sum to a provider. Although, this is not the extent to which the British Parliament has acted, it is evermore becoming a reality.

A few days ago, the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) abandoned an exception that could forever change the way copyright is viewed.[1] To explain this sweeping change, I will take some time to speak about copyright law in general.

Copyright was created to protect the right of the artist to ensure that he or she could profit from his or her works for a limited amount of time. Over the years, the rights have swung ever more to the copyright holder (as the limited time became ever longer, prolonging the enrichment of the public domain). When one purchases an album you purchase the medium to which it has been fixed (the CD),but the songs remain the property of the artist. The author maintains the sole right to profit from his or her work’s duplication.

However, the law has recognized exceptions to this exclusive right. One has the ability to copy a work for one’s own personal use for archival purposes. This was a principle that first pertained to libraries whose books needed replacing and evolved to modern day to allow one to transfer media between devices, and is recognized as a “fair use” in countries like the US. In addition many countries in the EU allow “personal copying” and have created a remuneration system by taxing storage media producers (hard drive producers, SD card manufacturers, and cloud services).[2]

The slogan of this millennial generation is “always connected,” no matter what device we access. We enjoy the ability to peruse an entire library of music, videos, and books. This has been attributed to the fact that we can transfer information so quickly. As a result of this act by the IPO to abandon this effort, the drive to revamp the UK’s archaic copyright laws puts UK citizens in an awkward position. Now, if you take any work that you download from the iTunes application on your laptop to your iPod, smartphone, tablet, and finally to the cloud, you have created essentially four copies of the same work in violation of this copyright. Services like iTunes and Google Music are essentially complicit in Copyright infringement.

From a public policy perspective this seems like a complete money grab from the entertainment industry, as the law that had been in place since 2014, which legalized personal copying, was overturned, thanks to a challenge from the industry claiming that it was not being fairly compensated for the alleged copies created.[3] It would seem unreasonable to tell an individual who spends $14 on Adele’s “25” that he or she can only listen to the music on whichever medium to which it was first downloaded. Regardless of the new legislation it would not be reasonable to think that individuals will modify their behavior. There is also a question as to how this will be enforced. Will companies be able to add trackers to their DRM to identify copies? It is highly doubtful that individuals themselves will be prosecuted but it opens the door to allow suits against Cloud providers like the Big Three (Apple, Google, and Microsoft). In response, these companies are pushing their respective legal teams to draft terms of service that can comply to this new development and absolve these service providers of civil and criminal liability regarding any alleged infringements facilitated by these services.

 

 

Sam Rodrigues is a 3L and a Resident Student Blogger with the Journal of Law and International Affairs at the Penn State University Dickinson School of Law.

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[1] See Andrew Griffin, Using iTunes, Ripping Music and Backing it Up All Illegal as UK changes Copyright Law, Independent (November 27, 2015), http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/using-itunes-ripping-music-and-backing-it-up-all-illegal-as-uk-changes-copyright-law-a6751466.html.

[2] See Graeme Burton, Government Backs Down on Move to ‘Legalize’ Private Copying, Computing (November 19, 2015), http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2435492/government-backs-down-on-move-to-legalise-private-copying.

[3] See Ripping Music and Films Illegal after High Court Overturns New Law, BBC (July 17, 2015), http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33566933/ripping-music-and-films-illegal-again-after-high-court-overturns-new-law.