It's already legal to format-shift in the UK ..... almost. "Innocent until proven guilty" -- you know, the way the law always used to work, pre-Blair -- includes the idea that whatever you are accused of must be proved actually to be a crime.
"Fair dealing" is a valid defence to a charge of copyright infringement. If you're unlucky enough to get pulled just for, say, making copies of your CDs on cassette to listen in the car, or making backup copies of your DVDs or VHS videos (you need a picture stabiliser -- or a recorder such as certain Philips / Daewoo models for which there is a known hack -- to avoid problems caused by crap in the field blanking interval) then insist on Crown Court.
They will *never* be able to find twelve people who have never taped an album to listen in the car. You will be acquitted by the jury, and this will set a precedent: whatever you did will be considered Fair Dealing forever after.
But you won't get as far as court; if you ever get arrested for format-shifting, the evidence will go missing and you will be released without charge. It's not in the interests of the entertainment industry for home taping to be formally legalised. Nor is it in the interests of the police: as long as there's a possibility that it might be illegal, a home-copied tape glimpsed on the passenger seat of a car can be used to get a warrant to search a suspect's home for evidence of a real crime.
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Legality in UK
It's already legal to format-shift in the UK ..... almost. "Innocent until proven guilty" -- you know, the way the law always used to work, pre-Blair -- includes the idea that whatever you are accused of must be proved actually to be a crime.
"Fair dealing" is a valid defence to a charge of copyright infringement. If you're unlucky enough to get pulled just for, say, making copies of your CDs on cassette to listen in the car, or making backup copies of your DVDs or VHS videos (you need a picture stabiliser -- or a recorder such as certain Philips / Daewoo models for which there is a known hack -- to avoid problems caused by crap in the field blanking interval) then insist on Crown Court.
They will *never* be able to find twelve people who have never taped an album to listen in the car. You will be acquitted by the jury, and this will set a precedent: whatever you did will be considered Fair Dealing forever after.
But you won't get as far as court; if you ever get arrested for format-shifting, the evidence will go missing and you will be released without charge. It's not in the interests of the entertainment industry for home taping to be formally legalised. Nor is it in the interests of the police: as long as there's a possibility that it might be illegal, a home-copied tape glimpsed on the passenger seat of a car can be used to get a warrant to search a suspect's home for evidence of a real crime.