This covers what you can legally do in regards to copyrighted works:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/I/chapter/...

Well, I'm from Germany and it doesn't sound wrong to me. And in Germany we don't even have anglo-saxon law, but napoleonic laws (sample cases matter less, written law text matters more, for one big difference). We also don't have "copyright" at all. We have a "Urheberrecht", which is very similar, but also very different in details.

One of the things is: if a person creates something with a certain creativity level (I'm sure "hello world" programs don't count) then the work has automatically "Urheberrecht". There never was the need to register it, not even in history (like in the US, the origin of the "(C) xxxx by yyyy" markers). You also don't need to write any sentence at all into your works. What exactly is "certain creativity level" isn't in the law, that's on a judge in case of dispute. Also data bases and things generated by machines aren't covered.

And you automatically have "Urheberrecht" of it. And so automatically others aren't allowed to copy your work! https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__2.html

(There are more ways you can get protection, e.g. if something is a computer program, or if something is art.)

And while this this can be seen draconian, then non-draconianess comes from exceptions. Generally private people are allowed to make one copy for their personal usage.

IANAL and the usual jadda jadda --- this is another difference between anglo-saxon and napoleonic right: in napoleonic right one doesn't have to state the obvious for fear of damages rulings ... oh, and technically we don't have napoleonic right in Germany either, as usual it's more complicated ... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtskreis

And yet, UK and DE were together with many other countries in the EU. And so a lot of laws in the agricultural and trade realms are similar. Copying (and selling) stuff is IMHO trade related. So it doesn't wonder me at all that in practice the have a similar outcome despite being in totally different law systems.

In the UK most copies are outlawed. There are explicit exceptions for things like internet caches and the transient copies made by routers. The fact the exceptions are needed shows how restrictive the law is.