The industry unsurprisingly portrays the High Court decision as a big win for performers and writers. At one point, it had claimed that compensation-free format shifts would rob creatives of £58 million ($90.5 million) per year. However, that's a tentative claim at best. After all, there's no real way to know if someone is ripping media in the first place, let alone whether or not those copies are intended for piracy or convenience. This also overlooks the blows inflicted against teachers and researchers, who now can't legally transcode media they need for presentations and studies. While it's true that the damage to personal use rights is mostly symbolic (the UK can't really enforce its new policy), the rule ultimately hurts more than it helps.

[Image credit: Jonathon Colman, Flickr]