U.K. Committee Injects Common Sense Into Copyright DiscussionU.K. Committee Injects Common Sense Into Copyright Discussion

A prestigious U.K. copyright committee has handed down its recommendations, advocating breathing common sense into U.K. copyright law: The committee, headed up by Andrew Gowers, former head of the Financial Times, recommends striking down the law that makes it illegal for consumers to rip CDs to iPods, or perform other "format-shifting" -- but only for CDs created after the law goes into effect.

The committee also recommends making caricature, parody, and pastiche legal (Weird Al Yankovic gets an explicit mention).

And the committee recommends denying a recording-industry request to extend copyright from the current 50 years to 95.

Ars Technica says: "As is usually the case when someone tries to balance the rights of producers and consumers, everyone will find something to gripe about here, but there's also a lot to like for both groups."