The EU initiative to review and update Copyright is still ongoing (although you could be forgiven for forgetting about it) and no doubt there will be proposals in 2015, following the previous consultation exercise. Apparently copyright features high up the agenda of Commissioner Oettinger . So there could be further changes to copyright legislation, following on the heels of the UK Government’s updating of the exceptions to copyright in 2014. The EU is committed to increased harmonisation of copyright in its member countries.

UK Music and various other bodies representing the music industry have launched a legal challenge to the Government’s implementation of an exception for Private Copying. The new exception permits you to format shift, for example by copying a music CD you have bought to use on your mobile device (essentially legalising what people were doing anyway). This is the new Section 28B of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), “Personal copies for private use”.

The basis for the challenge is that although the EU Copyright Directive allows  member states to implement just such an exception, it also includes a requirement for “fair compensation” for the relevant copyright owners and in the UK there is no mechanism to deliver that. Watch this space!