The UK is a Nest of Hardened Criminals

I'm not sure how many times I broke the law last week. It must be hundreds -- I did it eleven times just now.

I've bought a music player and I'm ripping my albums. (It's a Samsung -- Ogg Vorbis is definitely smaller than MP3.) The law in the UK specifically provides for sound recordings, a CD is universally acknowledged to be a copyright work, an OGG (or an MP3, or WMA) ripped from it is obviously a copy, and copying infringes the Chapter II rights of the copyright holder. None of the Chapter III permissions applies, and it looks like I'm bang to rights -- up to two years in the chowkey. I have checked and there's definitely nothing in the act about "unless everyone is doing it, in which case it's OK."

I could call the police but I'm afraid they'll laugh at me. I could call the BPI, but I don't think they'll care either.

There are two ways to look at this. We can go with the BPI and say that it's an anomaly that needs to be cleared up. Or we can face the fact that intellectual property, so called, is so different from property that concepts like theft just don't work, and change the law accordingly.

In the meantime, it's fun to watch Samsung, Microsoft, Dell and all the other keeping mousy quiet and hoping the whole issue will go away.