I was waiting for you to catch this one Stu. It’s not often locusta weighs in on actual topics more serious than movies, music, monkeys, and/or tropical fruit. But this article actually got a gurnsey yesterday.

So.. you’re studying law, what’re you going to do about it?

Say,

“It’s unlikely that the Australian Federal Police would investigate individuals for offences such as illegally copying a CD,” a police spokeswoman said.

But could they? I thought it wasn’t criminal, so the infringed party would have to file a civil suit against you? Or is that only in the US?

Hahah I study law but I don’t make it. Call up your local politician.

Bonhomme: Certain copyright infringements are criminal offences. See, eg, Copyright Act 1968 ss 132, 135AS. Exemptions (such as fair dealing) are in: Pt 3, div 3. As you can see, no provision is made for “backing up” or copying music from a CD to an iPod or any other device for that matter.

Obviously, the law is out of touch with technology today. Legislative change occurs at a snail’s pace, especially in a world where technological change happens so rapidly. So in these cases the authorities can try to enforce the law on everyone breaking it (such as RIAA’s mass-lawsuit let’s-sue-10-year-olds effort) or ignore that people are breaking the law altogether. Eventually the politicians will wake up and say “this is stupid, let’s update the law”.

It’s similar to jaywalking. Everyone does it, and apart from the once in a decade “police busts” where they run around the city CBD grabbing $20 fines from jaywalkers, it’s pretty much an unenforced law.