Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 76 posts

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#51

Post by Trombone12 »

The same story as reported by Ars technica[1] paints the EU law as the hero that produced some slight advances in copyright regulations based on essentially a completely reversed causuality than reported by the eff.

"The UK's music industry has successfully landed a significant judgement from the UK's High Court, countering a copyright exception that was brought in by the UK government last year. Since last October, there was a law that allowed you to make private copies of your own music; now the future of that law is uncertain."

"The UK government brought in the new copyright exception under a European Union directive that gives national governments that power, but which requires compensation to be paid to artists unless the harm caused to them by the change in copyright law is minimal."

It is also fun to contrast the position on the rights holders between the eff:

"Neither can we fully absolve the rightsholders from blame;"

and Arstechnica:

"The refusal to accept gracefully legislative changes is not new for the copyright industry. Perhaps the most egregious example of its dog-in-the-manger attitude [snip]"

[1]: http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/music-industry-...

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#52

Post by colomon »

realusername wrote: post #49
rsto wrote: post #20

European Copyright legislative is an inconsistent mess. Right now, in Austria, the government is up to demand 6% of the price of any digital storage device, to compensate copyright holders when the legit consumers of their work execute their right to make a private copy . So the European Court apparently just has settled that in one country of the EU, consumers do not have the right to make private copies, while in o…

Same in France, except that it is so high that CDs are ~10x the price of the ones in Germany (literally) so everyone is buying their CDs in Germany instead (or any other country, even the UK has cheaper CDs). Copy related taxes per country in europe: http://static.pcinpact.com/images/bd/news/120599.png (In French but easily understandable)

Is that blank recordable CDs or actual music CDs?

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#53

Post by colomon »

I'm curious. This is phrased as a ruling on CDs. But doesn't the logic used suggest that if I buy an album on MP3, I cannot copy those files to my server and phone? It would be really weird if (US prices here, maybe UK is different?) I spend $15 on a CD I can only listen to the music using the original CD in a CD player, but if I spend $9 on an MP3 album, I can copy it to all my devices.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#54

Post by realusername »

colomon wrote: post #52
realusername wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in France, except that it is so high that CDs are ~10x the price of the ones in Germany (literally) so everyone is buying their CDs in Germany instead (or any other country, even the UK has cheaper CDs). Copy related taxes per country in europe: http://static.pcinpact.com/images/bd/news/120599.png (In French but easily understandable)

Is that blank recordable CDs or actual music CDs?

It's blank CDs and DVDs only, on this chart the tax is 35ct per CD and 1€ per DVD which seems about right.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#56

Post by psykovsky »

DanBC wrote: post #44
psykovsky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bureaucracy services, mostly.

Teaching? Libraries? Rubbish collection? Street cleaning? Public health? Social care; adult social services, child protection social services? Most of that isn't what people think when they hear bureaucracy.

All those services are surrounded by huge bureaucratic machines. As is any private company who wishes to make business.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#57

Post by antientropic »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #47
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you even know most things that come out of Brussels? Your sentiment is shared by many people all over the world with regard to their own national governments as well. That doesn't make all these countries undemocratic. A recent poll in the US shows that 65% of likely U.S voters think that their country is going in the wrong direction ( http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood... ). And that doe…

> That doesn't make all these countries undemocratic. A few examples do show a blatant lack of democracy, though. In France, we had a referendum regarding the new European constitution. We refused it at 60% (not counting abstention, which by the way was relatively low). Then a dozen months later, the same constitution came back (sections were shuffled around, but it was mostly a copy-paste job). No referendum this ti…

It was not undemocratic. Your parliament was democratically elected. It had a mandate to do things like ratifying new European treaties.

The problem was holding the referendum in the first place. Direct democracy does not work because it's a recipe for paralysis.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#58

Post by _0ffh »

Atropos wrote: post #37
rsto wrote: post #20

European Copyright legislative is an inconsistent mess. Right now, in Austria, the government is up to demand 6% of the price of any digital storage device, to compensate copyright holders when the legit consumers of their work execute their right to make a private copy . So the European Court apparently just has settled that in one country of the EU, consumers do not have the right to make private copies, while in o…

The article is about a decision of the UK High Court, not the European Court of Justice, so it only applies to the UK.

Yeah, I am also not happy with the choice of words here. The reason for it seems to be that, while the court in question is national, the legislation which it cites as the base for its decision is European.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#59

Post by _0ffh »

anigbrowl wrote: post #2

Seizing on the opportunity to use this supranational directive to overturn a democratically-enacted law The directive exists pursuant to action of the European Parliament* which is also a democratic institution, as someone with Jeremy Malcolm's outstanding education is surely aware. * http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:... I'm not expressing an opinion on the merits of European copyright law;…

The facts of the given case notwithstanding, a lot of what happens on the EU level is quite undemocratic, IMHO. The reason being, that most of the power in EU institutions still lies with the Commission, not with Parliament. Commissioners are appointed by the national Governments, and not elected, and so twice-removed from all democratic processes.

Re: European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs

#60

Post by guard-of-terra »

batou wrote: post #32

Lets be realistic here. So I'm going to go and delete 90% of my mp3s and go and purchase a CD player this afternoon. Actually nope, I'm going to continue to steal all my music out of a combination of apathy and disdain for the system. Oh and continue to go to the odd gig.

You and some other commenters miss the point completely.

Now the "rights holders" will have right to tax every storage medium you buy. n% of what you pay for your HDD goes to them. (And I don't know who is that, since everybody I lisen to won't get a cent)

Post reply on HN