Had there been a general intention to say that anything short of large-scale commercial copying was allowed, which is effectively what a broad interpretation of 'hobby' would mean, then there would have been no obvious need to detail various specific exemptions.
>>"It's likely that home taping was not seen as a big enough deal to care about."
I wouldn't generally equate 'not caring about' with 'explicitly legalising'.
>>"It's only recently that private copying has become a major taboo, no one really cared before, it was commercial infringers that all prior laws were really targetted at- the guy down the market selling dodgy rip offs and getting money for it that really did contribute towards crime, not the guy who made a copy of a tape for a friend or a mix tape."
There's a difference between *laws* being targeted at certain infringers and *enforcement* being targeted at them.
It isn't necessarily a bad thing to have general prohibitions, but enforce specifically where the problems seem to be - that means not having to rewrite laws all the times as situations change.
Generally it seems the copyright laws are general with some fairly narrow exemptions.
If someone looked at an exemption and thought it could *arguably* be stretched to cover them doing what they wanted to do, then unless they ask for official/professional clarification, they end up taking the risk of finding out later that they were wrong.
Register
Intentions
Had there been a general intention to say that anything short of large-scale commercial copying was allowed, which is effectively what a broad interpretation of 'hobby' would mean, then there would have been no obvious need to detail various specific exemptions.
>>"It's likely that home taping was not seen as a big enough deal to care about."
I wouldn't generally equate 'not caring about' with 'explicitly legalising'.
>>"It's only recently that private copying has become a major taboo, no one really cared before, it was commercial infringers that all prior laws were really targetted at- the guy down the market selling dodgy rip offs and getting money for it that really did contribute towards crime, not the guy who made a copy of a tape for a friend or a mix tape."
There's a difference between *laws* being targeted at certain infringers and *enforcement* being targeted at them.
It isn't necessarily a bad thing to have general prohibitions, but enforce specifically where the problems seem to be - that means not having to rewrite laws all the times as situations change.
Generally it seems the copyright laws are general with some fairly narrow exemptions.
If someone looked at an exemption and thought it could *arguably* be stretched to cover them doing what they wanted to do, then unless they ask for official/professional clarification, they end up taking the risk of finding out later that they were wrong.