The government said this week that it will consult this autumn on an exemption from copyright law for people who are moving music on to MP3 players

That makes lots of sense: everyone copies music in this way and, provided the music isn't also BitTorrented, the music industry turns a blind eye. A simple tweak to copyright laws should do the trick, right?

If only it were that simple. Trouble is, our laws on this are set by Europe. The Copyright Directive said you can let people copy music to iPods provided you also give fair compensation to copyright holders.

The UK's solution to date has been simple: ban private copying. In other countries that do allow private copying, like France and Germany, there's a levy on blank media. The report from the Parliamentary Select Committee on culture, media and sport scoffs that approach. A tax on blank CDs is a blunt instrument, it says.

So what is proposed instead? No idea. This report doesn't say. Perhaps it hopes that nobody will ask that question. But the music industry surely will.

Andrew Gowers, who reviewed our IP laws last year, was the one who recommended legislative reform to allow private copying. He was brave enough to suggest how it could work: if the music industry thinks it will lose money it can reflect that in the price of recorded music. So we'll add a quid to CDs, perhaps. That won't be popular; but far less popular would be his idea for legalising the music that's already on our iPods and computers. He proposed a licence for the right to keep playing our back catalogues. Will consumers accept, say, the price of an iPhone for the right to legalise their back catalogues? Not a chance.