SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT v PAUL OWEN & ORS (2002)

[Jeremy Barker]

Skywatch wrote:

> All,
>
> But to play a CD you need to copy the data from the disk to the player's
> electronics.
> The 'data' itself is unplayable without this copying as it needs to be
> processed via hardware/software.
>
> Seems a moot point about all the non-rip CD's comming on the market. It
> only needs a CD player, a phono lead and a soundcard to get the info into
> the PC. From there MP3/WAV files could be made easily. Who are they fooling?

This is called the "Analog(ue) Gap" and the recording industry would like nothing
better then to see it plugged.


> People have for years used audio and video tapes to copy records and TV
> (both copyrighted) and this fuss never happened. The media owners are
> getting greedy IMO.

The fact that people have being doing something does not mean it is permissible.


> As I see it, if I buy a CD, record, DAT, cassette, DVD, Video etc... I
> should be allowed to keep it on any format that I wish to use it on. Not
> reselling it, not distributing it, just using it for my personal pleasure.

I agree, but the UK parliament decided not to give you that right.  In most other
countries you have that right.


> I am transferring some old 12" singles to CD to preserve them better and
> remove all the clicks etc.... I cannot buy them on CD (some are 20 years
> old!) - So will the copywrong police be kicking in my door soon?

In theory they could be but it is exceedingly unlikely.  What you are doing is
illegal in the UK but it is not an offence (i.e. a crime) unless done in the
course of a business or on a large scale.  In theory the copyright owner could
sue you for the licensing fee for making c copy.  In reality it's most unlikely
to get beyond a cease and desist letter (in the unlikely event the copyright
owner finds out what you've been doing) because the money involved makes the cost
of bringing a case uneconomic.

Most other countries allow this sort of copying and impose a royalty charge on
blank recording media which is fed back through the rights management societies
to compensate the copyright owners for lost licensing income.  The UK has always
opposed this approach on the grounds that people who use blank media for other
purposes are paying a royalty charge unnecessarily.  When a blank media royalty
charge was proposed in the UK some of the most vociferous opponents were
charities helping blind people.


> I hope that there are mass boycots against media vendors who try to limit
> what we can use to listen to their media on. If they do not release
> software that will work on a PC CD rom they will ENCOURAGE piracy. I know
> many young people who have Pc's but no Hi-Fi . They use the PC CD drive
> instead. Even if they do buy the protected CD they cannot use it. They
> cannot buy a PC friendly version either. So where do they go for their PC
> compatable media? The internet?

An excellent point.  And there is also the problem that the "protected" CDs will
not play in a DVD player (which will play real CDs) or in some CD players that
use the same error-correction chips as computer CDROM drives.


> If IDE copyright encryption is built into all HDD's to limit copyrighted
> material, would this also apply to HDD video recorders which are now
> becomming widely available?

The proposals that were bandied about for IDE devices did not of themselves
restrict copying.  In effect all they did was embed read-only data in the device
that could be used by rights management software to encrypt data stored using the
device so that only software with access to the same device could decrypt it.
Unless the software cooperated the drive would work exactly like any other.  You
need to bear in mind that the proposals were for removable-media devices and were
aimed at making it impossible to record something on one device then take the
media to a different device to replay it.

jb