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It certainly won't end at the cabs, as around here in Finland they already pay the local MAFIA, sorry, Teosto, for the privilege of listening to the radio. The royalties are currently set at 32 euros/year, 42 if you also have a tv or other visual playback system.
see http://www.teosto.fi/fi/taksit.html (in Finnish, sorry)
They also have price lists for music in elderly homes, schools etc. Playing music in workplaces is covered, as is singing in the kindergarten and schools. You name it, we've got it. Not forgetting the spiritual side, churches are paying up also.

I'm anxiously waiting for the "whistling in shower" royalty payments.

The Finnish Composer's Copyright Society, Teosto http://www.teosto.fi/teosto/webpages.nsf should be able to help. This should be what they do. The Electronic Frontier Foundation might be able to help too http://www.eff.org/about/ You can and should get something done about this. There are people out there who will help (i.e. lawyers and organisations).

I'd be quite happy to get an EU-wide system though and I live in one of the countries you mentioned.

In Finland, if a musician want to get royalties on their music, they have to join Teosto. After you join, you waive the right to protect your rights to the organization and thus loose control over your own music. For example, the organization requires artists pay the royalties on their own productions if they want to distribute them for free over then Internet.

I have a couple friends who wanted to put MP3's of a couple songs that didn't make it to a CD to web to promote their new album but they couldn't do it since they would have had to pay Teosto for each download.

Teosto is also incredibly protective of the format in which you've purchased your music and was integral part in getting the new Finnish copyright law through which makes converting protected CD's to MP3 illegal. For non-protected music, they even try to get people to purchase a license to convert old recordings - DJ's are expected to pay 800 EUR / year for the privilege of converting old vinyls to CD's so they could play them in new joints that don't have an old-style record player.

And this is the organization which is supposed to protect the artist's rights! You don't get money if you don't join and if you do, they do a good job trying to protect you from yourself.

With this kind of organizations in control, I'd be happy to get a Europe-wide agency as it can't get _any_ worse than it is now and at least I'd be more likely to get a good selection of music to the local iTunes store.

I don't know where exactly the fee goes here in Finland, but I know for sure that our Teosto acts as an enforcer who collects the fee and sues those who won't pay.

MPAA is moving too slow. Here in Finland, the local MPAA/RIAA, Teosto, and the Finnish Central Criminal Police busted a BitTorrent network, Finnreactor early this morning, at the request of Microsoft, BSA and Teosto.

More interesting are the claims that the police had planted backdoors in the shared files to gather information about the users. IANAL, but apparently this isnt illegal here in Finland.

This happened in Finland a couple of years ago. Even though the prices are not too high, they are ridiculous.

For example, a kindergarten, solarium, beauty parlor, swimming hall, physical therapist or barber shop pays from 8.56 to 39.26 Euros per month (depending on the size of the premises) and taxi has to pay from 26 to 40 Euros per month (depending whether it has just a radio and CD player or a TV/VDO).

Actually, in Finland our *IAA representative Teosto has successfully sued the cab drivers for having a radio on while they've got a customer. You know, the customer might get to hear music for free and the artists would be left starving... Now each cab driver must pay a fee to Teosto or prove that he/she is not listening to the radio when with a customer.

They also attempted to sue churches for singing copyrighted hymns and kindergartens for playing and singing copyrighted childrens' songs. That didn't go too well in courts, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'll try again later on when the EU DMCA is in force.

They collect these music payments - but as well so called 'kasettimaksu' - aging back from C-tapes. This means that every digital storage what you purchase, you pay for Finnish artists. Even harddrives,CDROM, FLASH cards for digital cameras,cell phones etc - no matter what you store there. You pay.

The second bunch of assholes in Finland is Kopiosto which charges oranizations (companies,schools,etc) for having a paper copy machine. Fees are relative to the amount of copied paper - not the content. For example, you're a teacher who makes his/her own lecture material and let's people to copy that. Kopiosto then gives you a fee claming that you copied certain amount of commercial books - based on estimation.

And like in real communism, you cannot complain, just pay to 'common pool' and shut the **** up.

Well, my advice is:

SINCE YOU ALREADY PAID,
FEEL FREE TO COPY COMMERCIAL MATERIAL

The money goes to non-profit organization called Teosto ry, which is quite equal to RIAA. Some of the money then goes to artists. Threre's a brief summary in english on their homepage: www.teosto.fi

... Are Teosto, the , Finnish Composers' Copyright Society.
Now go be good /.ers and show em our outrage by /.ing their server: http://www.teosto.fi/teosto/webpages.nsf/Frames?Re adForm&English :)

AFAIK here in Finland each ringtone you download has a small percentage in it which goes to support the Gramex/Teosto copyright organizations.

My personal opinion is that the said organizations suck ass because of them you do not eg. hear radio in the bus (it would cost too much to pay the copyright mafia "their" money for the priviledge of "broadcasting" music to an audience). So you just have to sit quietly and stare out the window. If you've been in a Finnish bus, you know what I mean. Also, basically the money you pay end up supporting the most popular artists, Finland's equivalent of someone like B. Spears.

Why should there be these kind of organizations? Why should there even be record labels? Straight from artist to the consumer is the way to go. At this point there are too many middlemen in the chain.

Remember MPAA's proposed surcharge on blank video tapes a few years back, to reimburse them for revenues lost to piracy? Was any of that surcharge to be distributed to independent videomakers?

That is nothing compared to what we have here in Finland (yes, the land of Nokia, Mr. Torvalds and other cool high-tech stuff). We have a law-enforced added cost on recording media (Blank VC:s, CD:s & CD-RWs, MC:s, MD:s, I don't know what else) due to the supposed copying occurring at homes.

Quote from www.teosto.fi, first paragraph, translation by me:
The copying occurring at private homes causes economical losses to the copyright holders. Therefore, in the copyright law, there are rules about a cassette payment (should now be media payment..) from which the makers, performers and producers get a payment from home recording.

Now, essentially this means that everytime I buy a CD-R to record DATA in, buy a blank MD to record a performance of the choir in which I sing (I do that a lot) OR I buy a VC to record a program from free-to-air TV, I am supporting the recording industry of Finland.
And you thought RIAA was evil...