IN DEPTH: Copying CDs for personal use is now legal, but what does that mean for you?

What's changed?

As of right now, copying CDs for personal use is no longer a crime in the UK. Changes to the UK's copyright laws mean that you can no longer be prosecuted for filling up your MP3 player with music you happened to buy in a different format, and taking backup copies of your favourite movies is not going to land you in hot water either.

Some of you may be aware that this was meant to have happened back in June but then, thanks in part to some aggressive lobbying by the entertainment industry, the Government appeared to get cold feet.

While happy to pass changes to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act that allowed data mining, copying for academic research and in order to make media more accessible (for example, creating audiobooks with text-to-speech software) the law continued to take a dim view of personal copying and those amendments were shelved, pending further review.

That 'further review' has now happened and the Government's Intellectual Property Office has been able to announce that it is to allow personal copying for the first time - but possibly several years too late.

This doesn't mean the end of copyright or a free-for-all for pirates, and consumers may not get quite the freedom to copy film and video that they may expect. So what will change under the new law and doesn't this just formalise something that was happening anyway?

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 set out the limits of copyright protection for intellectual property. If you are a copyright holder such as a filmmaker, musician or writer, a publisher or just a company that owns the rights to a published work then the Act can help make sure that you get paid and - just as important in many cases - that someone else can't come along and exploit your work.

'Fair dealing' exceptions are made for using snippets of work in reviews or an academic context as well as some provision for incidental use (such as a copyrighted photograph in the background of a film or music accidentally recorded in a news broadcast). What was definitely not allowed until this month was making an entire copy of a work for personal use or sharing copies, even on a non-commercial basis.

These protections have served copyright holders well but as legislation has not kept pace with changes in technology, change was almost inevitable. Buying albums again and again in different formats just to be able to keep playing them, and being barred from 'format shifting' media between different digital forms, seem to many like unnecessary restrictions.

"The groups lobbying on behalf of rights holders are very powerful with international political influence," says Jim Killock or digital rights campaigners the Open Rights Group, "but they have pushed an extreme and unsustainable view opposing parody and data mining and insisted upon an 'iPod tax' in return for format shifting. The government has agreed to modest but important changes despite heavy lobbying but you have to wonder whether copyright lobbyists' credibility may have been dented by their extreme position."

What's changed?

The changes to the Copyright Design and Patents Act implemented in June and those agreed this month take the form of five 'statutory instruments'.

Four of these add provisions for making copies of existing works. These apply to public administration (to allow for easier discussion of a work by a public body), for use in research, making an accessible version for use by someone with a disability and simply for personal use. All of these include the concept of 'format shifting' for the first time so that you can take a film or a piece of music that you can only play on one device and make it usable on another - turning a CD into an MP3, for example.

A fifth amendment makes it legal to use copyrighted material for caricature, parody or pastiche as well as clarifying the use of quotations.

And what does it all mean?

Yes, but what does that actually mean?

"Copyright law is being changed to allow you to make personal copies of media you have bought for private purposes such as format shifting or backup," said a spokesperson for the UK Government's Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which is responsible for enforcing the Act. "The exception only applies to copies you have obtained legally, and it will be illegal to give other people access to the copies you have made."

This means that you could make a copy of a CD to play in the car or to rip the music on it to put into iTunes but you couldn't download a new copy of the album from the Pirate Bay - even if you already own it on CD, vinyl and cassette. You must make the copy yourself and you may not share it with anyone unless you delete all the copies you own.

One criticism of the revised Act is that, frankly, everyone sort of assumed this was ok anyway. Any serious music fan who owns a digital media player (and especially a high capacity device like an iPod Classic) would have to spend thousands on downloads to replicate their existing collections and has probably spent a good deal of time and hard drive space on converting CDs to MP3s already.

"Consumer surveys show that people do not realise this is currently illegal, and many people who know it is illegal do it anyway," said an IPO spokesperson back in May this year. "These changes are about improving clarity and respect for copyright by ensuring that consumers are not breaking the law when they carry out these everyday activities."

The changes won't just benefit music and film fans, however. As Jim Killock explains, business may benefit too. "The law will formalise what people have already been doing - for example copying CDs to their iPods, and that is one of the reasons that it is important that these right are established legally. [...]Cambridge manufacturer Brennan are forced to put warnings on adverts for their CD / MP3 converter to say that copying CDs for personal use is copyright infringement if you don't have permission from the copyright holder. So it will make a difference for how companies like this are able to market themselves."

Copy protection

One area that is sure to be contentious is copy protection. Although the amendments say that it will be legal to make personal copies, publishers can still enforce copyright protection through technology that it is (currently) illegal to circumvent.

Although it is rare to find a copy-protected CD these days, many DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are protected by copy protection countermeasures such as AACS encryption and ProtectDISC. EU law (adopted by the UK) makes it illegal to crack these protections, presenting would-be copiers with a legal quandary. These laws vary around the world so there is plenty of ripping software that will easily cut through copy protection, you just can't legally use it.

As Jim Killock puts it, "This is a particular problem for DVD owners and software developers such as the VLC project. As people's DVDs get old, they will want to make copies. The technology exists to do it but it's illegal to break the copy protection. The law does nothing to resolve this problem and it's a debate we're going to have to have on another day."

There is a sliver of hope built into the legislation, however. If you believe you are being unfairly prevented from making a personal copy of a work you can lodge an appeal.

"If they are too restrictive you may raise a complaint with the Secretary of State using the existing appeals process that has been in place for the past ten years. This process is open to individuals and representative bodies," says the IPO.

What about streaming?

One important form of digital media that is not covered by the amendments is streaming. Any movies or music that you consume by a streaming service - such as Spotify albums, Netflix or Sky Go movies - is protected and cannot be legally copied.

If you are among the many people who have decided that streaming is more convenient than a shelf full of discs, this may be worth bearing in mind. You don't own the media you stream, even if you have paid a fee to watch or listen to it.

Cloud storage might seem like something of a grey area but the law will treat it as simply a place to store your personal copies. "If the person who stored the copies in the cloud shares access to them, they will be infringing copyright," according to the IPO, "But they would not be liable if [for example] a third party hacked their account."

The amendments to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are, in the words of the Intellectual Property Office, "Small but important changes to copyright law to ensure it is fit for the digital age." In some areas they may seem like they have not quite caught up enough but perhaps this should be seen as a good start.

It has taken many years of lobbying by digital rights and consumer groups to allow exceptions to be made for personal use and the kind of fair use required by parodists and makers of pastiche and this has happened in the face of equally fastidious counter-argument by industry bodies and copyright maximalists.

You may have been quite happily making personal copies for years before these changes but at least now you can do so with a clear conscience and the groundwork has been laid for future revisions that may swing the pendulum further in the direction of consumers, while still allowing artists to benefit from their creations.

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