It looks like Australia isn't alone in being a technological backwater - with the UK government still yet to legalise ripping CDs and DVDs to portable media players. Hopefully the UK will do a better job of its laws than the pathetic attempt by the luddite Australian government and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock.

The copyright law is an ass and sadly it weighs heavily on the scales of justice in Australia.

Ruddock's proposals, which are yet to be passed as laws, allow "format shifting" of CDs but not DVDs, although it looks like the legalisation is so badly written that it won't actually legalise it anyway because it forbids keeping multiple copies - such as one on your computer and one on your music player. Still, what can you expect in a country where it's still illegal to record television to a VCR. Ruddock wants to fix that as well, changing the law so you can watch a recording once, but then you MUST tape over it. I'm serious! It would make an awesome April Fools joke but sadly it's true. The only reason to create laws so pathetic that no-one will actually follow them is to placate the powerful content industry lobby groups. This comes not long after Australian Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, had the nerve to call herself "a friend of the consumer" after selling out consumers for the interests of big business with her new media ownership laws. Nice to see that once again the government puts the consumer last.

VCRs have been around for more than 30 years and MP3 players well over five (yes people, the iPod's birth five years ago was not the birth of the MP3 player, believe it or not). If the asses who write the laws can't come to terms with these old technologies, it's little surprise that they're doing such a shocking job of handling newer technologies such as digital and IPTV.