ITunes, Apple Music Illegal In UK After Court Ruling

Thanks to the High Court’s decision, the very existence of this feature is illegal and using it is punishable by law.

iTunes runs afoul of the law by enabling CD ripping (see below). But if you thought that was insane and confusing, then you’ll be surprised (or maybe just used to all the madness by now) to learn that this latest ruling means one of iTunes key features is technically illegal too.

But, as TorrentFreak reports, the private copying exceptions have been overturned and the Intellectual Property Office has confirmed that ripping a CD in iTunes is no longer allowed. And now the British High Court has chimed in to make matters even worse for users, claiming that ripping CDs or making copies of content to an external hard drive or a cloud storage service using Apple’s music management software is illegal. While they specifically mention CD-to-MP3 conversion, this means any type of conversion is illegal. Finally getting around to transferring your old VHS tapes to DVD? Unusable.

“It includes creating back-ups without permission from the copyright holder as this necessarily involves an act of copying”, the government spokesperson added.

In other words, if your computer were to crash or get stolen, the only legally sound course of action is now to re-purchase all of your music and movies.

If you’re looking to rip a copy of recent albums from UK artists like Foals or Mumford & Sons onto your iTunes, you might not want to do it while traveling through Ol’ Blighty.