Australians Allowed to Format Shift Media

An anonymous reader writes "Australian Federal law will now allow format shifting of media (ie:Ripping CDs to MP3s). Something long allowed under US copyright legislation, but only now coming to the Land Down Under." From the article: "Once the new laws are passed, 'format shifting' of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal. The new laws will also make it legal for people to tape television and radio programs for playback later, a practice currently prohibited although millions of people regularly do it. Under the current regime, millions of households a day are breaking the law when they tape a show and watch it at another time."

Confusion of terms

[Dibblah]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shifting [wikipedia.org] is not the same as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_shifting [wikipedia.org].

Isn't is supposed to be legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

...until it is declared illegal?

I though you were supposed to be able to do format shifting and anything else as well, except that which is illegal. Seem that in Australia this is the other way around. Is this the new trend after 9/11?

I guess we should now check the latest version of the law books before doing anything IT-related.

A sad state of affairs :^)

ARIA (Australia's RIAA) won't be happy

[Marlor]

ARIA has long argued that these changes will "just create loopholes for pirates". They have asserted that they would never ask for the average consumer to be prosecuted, so it didn't matter that it was illegal - a rather ridiculous argument, but one that the Government has been happy to accept up until now.

I hope that fair use copies of CDs are made legal in the legislation as well. It would be crazy to allow people to create a copy of their music for their iPod, but not for their car CD player. I guess if this isn't allowed, I can just create an MP3 CD for my car, since that would be format shifting, and my car CD player plays MP3s fine.

Also, I hope that the taping of TV shows isn't limited to analog copies, and that format shifting of DVDs is made legal too. It would be nice for my MythTV box to finally be legal, and for these guys' [d1.com.au] product to be legal as well.

All in all, this seems like a decent change, apart from the extra penalties for copyright infringers that have been added to keep copyright owners happy. One nice side benefit is that the legislation will probably give the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission some justification to rule against "copy controlled" CDs in the same way as they have ruled that region-locked DVD players are an unjust restriction of consumers' rights.

Re:A victory in the right direction.

[thelamecamel]

And we Aussies, courtesy of the Free Trade Agreement with the US, inherit the DMCA. No-one here has ever been prosecuted for ripping CDs or taping TV. If someone was, there would be public outcry and the laws would be changed drastically. I believe no-one here has yet been prosecuted for downloading MP3s either.

This move makes legal what everyone's already doing in order to allow the clampdown on downloading MP3s and movies. This way, if the record companies overstep the line and try to prosecute someone for ripping a CD they own, then they'll lose the case and there won't be public pressure to change the laws drastically.

Everyone ignored the old line in the sand, so they're drawing a new one that they can get tough with.

Re:What took so long ?

[Eideewt]

It's probably best for everyone that legal systems move slowly. At least then we can catch them when they start to move in the wrong direction.

long allowed under US law?

[plasmacutter]

Pardon me, but according to the DMCA we are explicitly NOT allowed to format shift.

That is what DRM is, it's an intentionally different format.

An encrypted file is in the most basic definition a file with a unique format, nothing more, and DRM as it exists is extremely dependent on format. To shift format is to remove DRM.

How is australia to reconcile this with their direct sellout and adoption of the DMCA through AUSFTA?

Re:Yea, but....

[AlanS2002]

I think our patent laws are about the same as the US's, if not they're heading that way after the US/Australia FTA.

Re:Isn't is supposed to be legal?

[st1d]

>>The laws need to take that into account.

Only because the owners of these media items refuse to. We keep hearing about how cheap and easy it is for people to put "pirated" material online, yet you never seem to hear from those same folks about how cheap and easy it would be for them to do the same, and still make a good profit. They'll whine and cry about Apple not caving in to their demands for a 50 cent increase for IPod downloads, how it's hurting artists and killing the industry, yet they don't offer their own downloads for 99 cents, and bypass Apple altogether.

It's just a shame there aren't laws that require you to make a reasonable attempt to benefit from a "new technology" before you can sue to restrict the use of same by others.

Re:long allowed under US law?

[mcubed]

Pardon me, but according to the DMCA we are explicitly NOT allowed to format shift.

Where did you get that idea? Under the DMCA, we are not allowed to circumvent DRM, but format shifting is fine if you aren't circumventing DRM. Ripping a CD to another digital audio format (.mp3, .ogg, etc.) is fine because most CDs don't have DRM. And many of those that do implemented it so poorly that you can still rip them without violating the DMCA. Holding down the shift key is not a prosecutable circumvention technique. OTOH, using DeCSS is.

Michael

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What took so long ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the wonderful way DMCA and patents have been caught the instant they started moving in the wrong direction?

Re:ARIA (Australia's RIAA) won't be happy

[timmyf2371]

Maybe not, but I'm sure that music CD to a lossless audio file on a PC would be classified as format shifting, and I'm sure that lossless audio file to CD-R is also format shifting.