Tír Na HiFi

james wrote:http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story ... ourt-rules

"...
Last year the UK finally passed legislation to make the copying and ripping of CDs for personal use legal. After the legislation passed, several groups of rightsholders applied for a judicial review, arguing that the change would cause financial harm to them. (They suggested an alternative: taxing blank CDs and storage devices, sharing the resulting funds among rightsholders.) Now, the UK's High Court issued a ruling that agrees with them: "the decision to introduce section 28B [private copying] in the absence of a compensation mechanism is unlawful." The exceptions in place for private copying are now unlawful, and the UK government will need to amend the legislation if it is to have any meaningful effect.
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The copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is infringed by any person who, in the United Kingdom, or in any other country to which this section extends, and with-out the licence of the owner of the copyright,
(a) sells, lets for hire, or by way of trade offers or exposes for sale or hire any article, or
(b) by way of trade exhibits any article in public, if to his knowledge the making of the article constituted an infringement of that copyright, or (in the case of an imported article) would have constituted an infringement of that copy-right if the article had been made in the place into which it was imported.
(4) The last preceding subsection shall apply in relation to the distribution of any articles either (a) for purposes of trade, or (b) for other purposes, but to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright in question, as it applies in relation to the sale of an article.
(5) The copyright in a literary, dramatic or musical work is also infringed by any person who permits a place of public entertainment to be used for a performance in public of the work, where the performance constitutes an infringement of the copyright in the work: