It Will Soon be Legal to Rip CDs and DVDs in the UK

As of June 1st, Britons will no longer have to worry about being prosecuted for ripping a CD to MP3 for their own personal use.  Quaint, wot?

Believe it or not, it’s still against the law in many countries–I’m not sure about Canada, but who cares?–for legitimate owners of CDs to “format shift” them for listening on, say, a mobile phone.  The UK ruling comes as CDs continue their death spiral and as everyone gets deeper into the concept of streaming music.

But the law change gets more interesting when you read a little deeper.  Along with the ability to “format shift” music, people in the UK will legally be able to do the same for movies and TV shows (i.e. DVDs, presumably) as well as e-books.

As far as I know–and please correct me if I’m wrong–backing up DVDs to, say, a laptop for later watching on a long airplane trip is still verboten in Canada, yes?

(Via FactMag)