Changes to UK copyright laws will make it legal to duplicate your personal collection of media for private use. The amendment to the Intellectual Property laws has taken two years of legislation and debate to be finalised. The new UK copyright laws will come into effect on 1st June 2014.
The UK's Intellectual Property Office has published a document entitled 'Exceptions to copyright: Guidance for consumers' (PDF) to inform you of all the changes which will take place. It explains that the law concerning exceptions on how you use copyrighted material is changing in a number of small but important ways.
The headline change is in allowing "Personal copies for private use". From June you will be able to copy media such as music, e-books and films for backup or format shifting for your own private use. The Intellectual Property Office points out that such common activities like ripping your own MP3 to play on your own MP3 player - are currently not legal. The new laws will address that and many other usage cases. Of course this doesn't mean you can, from June, make copies of media for friends or family or copy something you have borrowed or acquired illegally.
The guidance mentions that you can make your personal copies on any device you own and includes a nod to cloud storage. However you can't let anyone else access that area of your cloud storage. Also it is noted that you can't backup or copy streamed media.
A FAQ in the guidance document notes that computer programs are not included in the copying for backup and personal purpose allowance by the new law. Games are not specifically mentioned. The FAQ also reminds readers that if you sell on a CD or DVD you must remove any personal copies from your devices.
