The Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA) warns South Africans that they are not permitted by law to copy their CDs to a computer format such as MP3. This warning comes as a part of their Stop Piracy Campaign.

A number of intellectual property lawyers confirmed this when MyBroadband previously followed up on this issue. Andrew Rens, Lance Michalsons from Michalsons Attorneys and Tobias Schonwetter, the legal lead of Creative Commons South Africa have all agreed that you are not allowed by law to “format shift” any recordings that you don’t own the rights to.

The operations director of RiSA, David Du Plessis, explained that the default position is that you are not allowed to reproduce or copy a sound recording or musical work without the authorisation pf the copyright holder.