Last Christmas, the USB turntable was a popular gift which allowed music-junkies to lovingly transfer their record collections to their computers and to the significantly less perishable medium of MP3 – but a few of you wrote in to question how revolutionary these devices actually are. “I’ve been digitising vinyl for years,” writes Hamish Thomson, “simply by stringing a cable between the Tape Out socket of my existing hi-fi and my computer. It isn’t really necessary to fork out that amount of money.” Hamish may be ahead of the game, but our questioner was right to raise the issue: surprisingly, transferring music from vinyl to your hard disk (or indeed to cassette, or ripping CDs, or any form of format-shifting) is, strictly speaking, still technically illegal under UK law unless you have the permission of the copyright owner. Simon Baggs, litigation expert at media law firm Wiggin, explains. “When you buy a record, you don’t acquire any rights in the sound recording – merely the right to listen to that format you’ve bought. The law has been the same for long time: copying is prohibited.” Many of you emailed in (with the best intentions, I’m sure) incorrectly advising that format-shifting for personal use is perfectly legal. “Of course, people do it all the time,” continues Simon Baggs, “and the law has been subject to derision. So a Government-commissioned review of intellectual property recently recommended that it finally be allowed, and this is now under consideration. Incidentally, the record industry has made it clear that they won’t take action to prosecute individuals for format-shifting in this way.”

So, having almost been let off the hook, many of those who have joyfully transferred their long-deleted vinyl records to MP3s have had the urge to share them on a music blog; these are rapidly growing in number, and lovingly maintained by fans who are passionate about music to such a degree that they feel they have the right to give it away. It does, of course, infringe copyright. “I’m amazed by the false moral highground taken by these bloggers,” writes Sarah Swanston, “who believe that just because something isn’t available in the shops, it suddenly lapses into the public domain.” Simon Baggs agrees. “Consider an equivalent scenario; just because a particular book isn’t available at Waterstones, this doesn’t mean you can duplicate your copy of it and distribute it to people on the street.” This wave of vinyl bloggers might misguidedly consider that they’re providing a service. But if you are going to digitise vinyl and avoid the wrath of the copyright owner, it’s probably best to leave the files on your hard disk, for private gratification.