UK legalises Backing up Music, Films etc.

[peteyt]

For years, while often done without any consequences, It has been technically illegal to backup music, films and other types of media. For example, buying music digitally via itunes and then copying it to a CD was illegal.

Finally this has changed in the UK, bringing our digital rights to the 21st century. People will now be able to back up media to online cloud storage services and physical media such as blank cds/dvds as long as its for personal use and not shared with anyone else physically or digitally.

There are a few other limits with the change. Users can't legally sell physical media if they have a backup in some form of that media and are supposed to delete the backup first although most obviously won't. Rented media such as films and games can't be backed up either and streams on subscription based sites/services such as spotify cannot be recorded/captured etc. Finally, it will be legal for people to convert files to their own choice of format but sellers/distributors etc. can still include DRM to make this much harder.

The law also includes a change in the rights for parody videos. In the past parody videos where often removed from online sites such as YouTube due to copyright issues but this will now only be possible if the videos portray a bad image such as racism.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29448058

[scottish]

The law also includes a change in the rights for parody videos. In the past parody videos where often removed from online sites such as YouTube due to copyright issues but this will now only be possible if the videos portray a bad image such as racism.

That doesn't matter as YouTube is a US based company, so will continue to remove it as they see fit (unless US law is the same as ours as I imagine they'll strictly follow US law and broadly followed international laws as appropriate).