The UK's High Court has passed down a ruling that essentially makes using iTunes one of the most prevalent criminal acts across the pond. Believe it or not, up until last year, the act of ripping a CD to iTunes was illegal in the UK. The new ruling reverses last year's easing of laws, thanks to complaints from music groups in the region.
Why? Labels and publishers realize that they're making more money if you buy multiple copies of an album. Although most American listeners (such as your correspondent) take for granted that we can load the CD we just bought onto iTunes, other countries don't give you the right to convert your purchase from one format to another. Therefore a Brit must, legally, download Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" individually if they want it on iTunes, and leave the hard copy of 1989 for listening to in the car/stereo. This means other acts of conversion—such as owning a turntable that can record digitally to a computer, or even transferring a copyright-protected VHS to DVD—are illegal as well.
The trickiest part of the law that many publications haven't gotten to: "It includes creating back-ups without permission from the copyright holder as this necessarily involves an act of copying," reads the law. So you better hope your computer doesn't crash or that the folks at the Apple store need to override your hard drive, because creating alternate copies is also illegal. But wait, there's more: An iPod is nothing more than a specialized hard drive, so yeah, uploading any song you downloaded onto it is a crime.
That makes iTunes/iPods essentially useless in the UK, although the government hasn't appeared especially keen on cracking down. Apple itself might need to prepare some updates for its UK iTunes software however. The current status of the program, which users know will automatically ask if they want to upload an album as soon as it's inserted in the disc drive, is now technically encouraging its users to commit a crime.
Have fun with that, guys.
