Improvements To UK Copyright Law
I was pleased to discover recently that, from the 1st of June, format-shifting will be legal in the UK. The change has generally been reported in terms of music – it’s now legal to rip a CD so that you can listen to it on your MP3 player. People have been doing this for as long as MP3 players have been available, of course. Before the advent of MP3 players, it was common practice to copy CDs and albums onto tape to listen to them on personal stereos or in the car. What is more relevant to this blog, however, is that the changes also apply to ebooks.
Under the present law, all these cases, as well as converting an ebook from one format to another, are illegal in the UK. The law is set to change on the 1st of June, at which time converting an ebook from one format to another (from ePub to Mobi, for example, to read it on a Kindle) will become legal. In my opinion, this is long overdue. Many people have been doing it for years, assuming that it was legal, as it has been in the US for many years. As long ago as 2006, the Gowers Review, commissioned by the government, recommended similar changes to the law, but the recommendations were ignored. In 2011, the Hargreaves Review (also commissioned by the government) made similar recommendations, which were accepted by the government, but it’s taken three years for them to be enacted.
Not surprisingly, the new law will only allow copies to be made for personal use. It won’t be legal to make copies for friends and family. There is another important caveat: all of the above applies to ebooks that don’t have DRM, but many do. The UK Intellectual Property Office website states that, where DRM is used to prevent copying, the copyright owner “may have the right to take action against a person who gets round” the DRM. So it would appear that format-shifting DRM’d books will still be illegal, since it isn’t possible to convert them without first removing the DRM. Wherever possible, I don’t use DRM, because it causes problems for legitimate consumers (like making it difficult for them to convert formats) while doing nothing to stop, or even hinder, those who wish to make illegal copies.
The UK Intellectual Property Office has more information on the changes. The “Exceptions to copyright: Guidance for consumers” document (PDF) is particularly recommended.
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