Copying a CD onto your iPod – are you breaking the law?

Of course it should!

And since you’re here, Mark McLaren, can you get involved again in the convo topics for nuisance calls and Sale of Goods Act?

We need market research calls to be opt in only

Call centres and sales companies shouldn’t use multiple names and telephone numbers to make sales and marketing calls

The Sale of Goods Act should be updated with longer warranties

yes of course this should be legal but it isnt an area where the law is being used contrary to Which members/consumers interests in practice, so hardly a priority. better to focus your efforts on where people are unprotected or where the law isnt working than non-issues? Is this Which attempting to ‘look good’ by appearing to influence [where there is already agreement the law needs updating and the topic is fashionable ie tech related] rather than spending time on things that affect a larger number of consumers more [even if many arent Which members] eg lack of real competition in the energy and banking sectors, lack of accountability for what services we get as consumers for our taxes, finding ways to stop uk govt [so us the taxpayer] being ripped off so much by big business.

as a start, why dont you annually write down and publish your priorities for improving thins for consumers, or indeed consult your members on what they want you to focus on…

“As long ago as 2006, the BPI, which represents the music industry, said it wanted to make it ‘unequivocally clear to the consumer that, if they copy their CDs for their private use in order to move music from format to format, we will not pursue them’.”

As long ago as 2006? I’m surprised it’s not as long ago as when we started being able to record our vinyls onto cassettes to be able listen to them in our cars!!

Anyway, what the BPI and the Government are saying is, the horse has bolted, it would cost us much more time and effort than it would be worth to even try to bring it back, and there’d be a revolution, so why bother to close the stable door now.

Copying purchased music has been going on for years ever since a means to do so was available – I remember my father copying vinyl records onto a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I did the same onto cassettes and now to mp3.
With mp3 players now being incorporated into so many different aspects of daily life, from phones to cars, of course it should be legal to copy CDs one has paid for.

Horse has already bolted, no point spending too much time on this.

I first bought music on cassette, then LP, then CD. Now it’s all on mp3. Does the music industry really expect me to have bought the same stuff 4 times? If I’m buying the medium, then mp3 would be free. If I’m buying a license to listen to a particular song, then I shouldn’t have to pay for it for each medium.

It is not against the law to format shift; but you need a license to do it. Unfortunately, the initial PRS ProDub license costs around £250 for up to 5,000 tracks and then an annual top-up license is another £100 per 1,000 tracks.

This license is designed to allow DJs and such like to transfer their record/CD collections onto digital media, so they can operate from a laptop. Interesting to note that the rate for these “professionals” to format shift works out at only 5p-10p per track, so why is Joe Public expected to pay the full cost of the track for each medium?