The Australian Federal Cabinet has (finally) agreed to make “sweeping changes to copyright laws”. The important thing for mobile is that it will be legal to transfer music (legally purchased music) from a computer to a mobile phone — or to save it to the computer in the first place. The laws haven’t passed yet, and we’ll have to wait and see whether the additional police powers against copyright infringement are enough of a sweetener to stop the music labels from lobbying against it, as they have in the past.
It seems the Brits aren’t so lucky…the UK National Consumer Council has deemed the nations copyright laws as unfit for society, citing a study which showed that most people were actually unaware of the law.
“Ominously for music companies, almost 60 per cent of respondents said it was “perfectly legal” to copy the contents of music CDs onto other systems, such as a computer or an MP3 player (or mobile phone)…Although just over 20 per cent admitted they didn’t know if copying CDs was illegal for personal use in their own homes, the lowest number of respondents – just 18 per cent- knew it was against the law.”
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