The German recording industry calls for stricter rules for personal copies

November 2, 2004

The German recording industry calls for stricter rules for personal copies
The German recording industry has once again taken a position in the ongoing discussion on the revision of the Copyright Act and called for stricter rules for personal copies. "We need a restriction on mass music copies," emphasized the chairman of the German Association of the Recording Industry, Gerd Gebhardt. At the beginning of September, the German government presented the basic items in the amended Copyright Act. However, the draft that has been made available remains very controversial both among lobbies for the music industry, on the one hand, and research organizations and proponents of personal copies, on the other.

Already, four times as many music copies are burned as originals sold, Gebhardt stressed, repeating the arguments behind the industry's call for greater restrictions of personal copies in copyright law. Gebhardt called on the German government to "stem the flood of legal personal copies."

Gebhardt says the industry would like to make copies for third parties and those not made from originals illegal; only copies made from one's own originals and for one's own use would then be legal. In addition, the right to save recordings of radio shows and Internet radio is to be amended. The German Association of the Recording Industry called for a ban on "intelligent recording software" that allows individual works to be saved automatically. Gerbhardt insisted that the government's draft amendment to the Copyright Act would have to include these demands for personal copies and broadcast rights if it did not want to lag behind technological developments all of the time.