BPI may grant Brits right to rip

While Americans continue to bemoan the loss of fair-use rights via DRM, the Broadcast Flag and other new legislation, Brits may find themselves with new rights via an unlikely source: the BPI, the country's equivalent of the RIAA, which is recommending some changes to the UK's copyright laws. However, the new rights will really only legalize something that both Brits and Americans have been doing for years: ripping music from CDs to digital audio players, which is currently illegal in the UK. As one industry exec said, "this is about the UK music industry responding effectively to the changing way music is consumed." But just because the BPI is willing to bless the idea of ripping CDs you've already purchased, don't think they've gone all soft. When it comes to file sharing, they're in sync with their US counterparts, and will continue hunting down suspected copyright thieves wherever they lurk.