Here in Canada that is not the case, there is no law explicitly granting consumers the ability to media-shift things they own, let alone circumvent any protection put on by companies preventing you from doing this. There are a few small mentions in our laws about doing so for musical sound recordings for private use.
Sadly our Conservative government has allegiances to the American copyright industries and the RIAA so they love bending over and trying to ram us with these awful draconian laws that don’t permit format shifting etc. Then again, the Liberals lie and try to ram us too with Bill C-60.
Of course you should be able to media shift the things you own for your own personal use! It is stupid to expect me to repurchase media for each new media player that comes out, especially when so many media versions are discontinued when they become a burden to the companies or when allegiances are made, etc. They can play that game, I’m not playing it.
When I buy a media item, I buy it because I intend to consume it, how I choose to do so should not matter one bit to them nor should they have any say or influence (which they don’t). Conditional licenses, psh. That’s like Kenny G charging you more money to have sex with his music in the background than to have it playing while cleaning the house.
All the media companies love to bitch about how their industry is dying. Good for them. I still get my tunes, I still go and see local bands and buy local band CDs that don’t have any copyright to bother with. That makes it easier to share their tunes with my friends, who then go to their shows and buy music. You see, it’s just the middlemen who are bitching about the lost revenue here, the creators rarely get more money from different versions, too many greedy people have their hand in the pot. If you gave an artist $20 in their hand they’d make more money than if you bought their iTunes single.