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Chances are, unless you were reasonably well versed in copyright law, you weren't aware that until very recently, it was actually illegal for you to copy media you owned. That's right, taking that CD and ripping it to your PC, or taking songs you've downloaded and putting them on an MP3 player: all illegal until a couple of months ago. Apparently though, the music industry doesn't like that this is now perfectly acceptable and it wants a tax implemented to compensate it.
Unfortunately this isn't just some lobby group with its own survival in mind, but a large collection of industry bodies like the Musicians' Union, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and the UK Music collective. Together, they've launched an application to have the government look over this copy law, suggesting that it create a tax on all forms of blank media that could be used for copying music to.
Oh I bet you would, dirty copiers. Don't you know ripping a CD is a gateway crime?
That means hard drives, pen drives, flash memory, CDs and DVDs and anything else you can think of that could store a song or two. It claims that it needs this money to offset what it will lose now that the government has made copying legal, despite the fact that the change in law was designed to prevent people from being caught in a toothed loophole, rather than encourage them to do it.
At least the musician groups don't want to go after the copiers any more though: “We fully support the right of the consumer to copy legally bought music for their own personal and private use, but there must be fair compensation for the creators of the music,” it said in a statement (via TorrentFreak).
KitGuru Says: As usual, media industry representatives are confused what drives earnings for artists. In their eyes, it's copyright the allows them to make money, instead of what really matters: talent. If you make good product and make it available fairly, people will buy it. The growth of indie gaming is a prime example of that. The same thing could easily apply to music, but it's still locked in with this system of trickle up payments.
They say there should be compensation for a consumer copying music for personal use, but how do they have to do any more work to earn this compensation? I believe once the consumer has purchased the music, as long as it’s for personal use, they should be allowed to copy it to any storage media they want.
fair compensation? they get payed millions for the tiny amount of work they do.
People are still paying (over paying) for their music, why should we have to pay multiple times just in case we want to put music we payed for on an additional backup cd?
They have been trying it on with this one for years, I remember in the 80’s the same thing with blank cassettes. Quite honestly these people are just money grabbing scumbags. If I buy an album on CD I have bought the music for me, If I want to play it on an mp3 player (say my phone) I should be able to. These people just want to squeeze the small guy for all his worth. They need to wake up and smell the 21st century coffee!
Isn’t their fair compensation the fact that I fucking bought the music to start with?
If I bought a music CD that I copy to my PC and phone to listen to, why do I have to pay them for that? I’ve paid for it. I don’t see why hard drives and removable media should get more expensive because of this.
EDIT:
If this happened I’d stop buying music altogether and pirate everything. Since, y’know, I’m now paying for it in the tax. I’d be actively telling smaller bands to get their cut from the UK Music Collective.
Just try it assholes and watch your sales plummet bunch of money grabbing scumbags ! take a 50% pay cut and then you ,ight have something to talk about.
Here in Spain we have that tax since… I can’t even remember how long ago so chances are it’s gonna be a thing there soon
We already have this shit in italy
In the netherlands we already have to pay 6% extra on all storage media for this kind of stuff this includes phones and tablets :I
don’t care.. downloading music for free.. nobody cares here..
will pay for music when i get a Job.
Well, they are idiots, so. :/ If UK keeps going this way even copying maschines will be banned or taxed for. and dual monitors that is set up to copy the main screentoo, since that is copying the media on the main screen… etc etc. that’s literally how stupid all this is to a normal pair of brainhalves.
So they consider copying music from a CD to a PC, phone or tablet is wrong? UK realy need that civil war soon, this government needs to be rid of. :/ Does someone even TRY to overthrow the UK gov.? This IS tyranny and power abuse, you know.
Also, http://www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/biggest-music-pirates-also-buy-the-most-music/
Not sure about music but for movies we are allowed to make a backup copy of it & doing so would imply that we would be using another form of storage. What am I suppose to do if my disk gets scratched or damaged or what ever send it into the record maker for repair? Take it back to the shop & ask for a replacement?
I might have to try that one let’s see the response I get…
This was not the governments idea, they’ve been good by making it legal.
Hopefully (and likely) they will listen to us again and stop this becoming a reality.
I agree wholeheartedly!
You wouldn’t download a car…