In Britain, an interesting initiative is afoot that, if successful, would allow music consumers in the UK greater freedom. The BPI, the body that represents the British music industry, believes that consumers should be allowed to copy CDs to their local devices—computers, iPods, and so forth—for the purpose of personal use.
This is a very interesting development in light of BPI’s reputation among intellectual property lawyers in Britain. BPI has vigorously pursued “music pirates,” those nasty folks that just can’t stave off the temptation to distribute copyrighted music over the Internet without authorization. By supporting this legal change, BPI has adopted a sensitivity to reason and fair play not often seen in the debate about CD-copying in the United States. After all, the RIAA now insists that backing up one’s CD collection on a computer or other device is illegal. (It is important to note, as the EFF has, that the RIAA has done an about face in this connection, now insisting that backing up CDs is unlawful when its earlier position was that such copying was lawful.)
In any event, it is interesting that representatives of the music industry in Britain have the opportunity to present their views on issues like CD-copying to the Gowers Review, an independent body whose sole purpose is to evaluate the existing legal framework for the protection of intellectual property. In my experience, the DMCA exemption rule-making process does in some sense provide an independent review body. But that review body only has the authority to grant exceptions for classes of works to § 1201 of the DMCA, which seems to leave Congress itself as the only review body we have here in the states to revisit and revise the panoply of other regulations that comprise our intellectual property framework.