The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has said it won't pursue consumers who copy music from their CDs to listen to on portable music players.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media & Sport inquiry into New Media and the Creative Industries yesterday, the trade body said it didn't consider copying to different devices a problem as long as it was solely for personal use.
UK consumers who rip CDs they have bought in order to fill an iPod or other MP3 player are technically guilty of copyright infringement. The BPI didn't say how it would collar any consumer transferring music from paid for CDs to other devices, but its chairman Peter Jamieson admitted this activity is widespread.
"Traditionally the recording industry has turned a blind eye to private copying and has used the strength of the law to pursue commercial pirates," he said.
"We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties. We want to make it unequivocally clear to the consumer that if they copy their CDs for their own private use in order to move the music from format to format, we will not pursue them."
