[pparkkin]

From the linked text.

The government's choices are now to remove the private copying exception—making personal copying illegal again, or to supply additional evidence that copyright owners suffer no or minimal “harm” from personal copying, or else to begin imposing a new tax on users to compensate the industry for that “harm”.

Which sounds to me like UK has the option to start collecting a similar surcharge to compensate for the right to make private copies of works. They are not required to ban private copying completely.

[rsto]

Thanks, I read the article but this sentence must have slipped my attention. I really would like to see them to supply evidence that copyright owners suffer no or minimal harm from personal copying but guess they won't even bother attempting.