Finnish Taxi Drivers Must Pay Music Royalties

jonerik writes "According to this story from Ananova, Finland's Supreme Court has ruled that taxi drivers must pay royalty fees of about $20 annually if they play music in their car while a customer is in the backseat. According to the article, 'Lauri Luotonen, chairman of the Helsinki Taxi Drivers' Association, says the ruling is likely to force most drivers to keep their radios off.'" This includes if they play the radio, which ostensibly already pays such fees.

Comments

Yowch.

[Freston Youseff]

That's almost more outrageous than the tarrifs you have to pay when entering and exiting San Fransisco in a taxi. Sheesh!

This concept exists here in America too.

[Blaede]

Any business establishment that plays music (retail stores especially) in earshot of all customers must pay royalties (figure unknown to me). Not everyone pays, it mostly is enforced against large retail and department store chains. The upshot of the law is a clerk can have a small radio at their station, but if you broadcast music over the store speaker system, then you must pay.

Re:This concept exists here in America too.

[Lumpy]

LIE!!!!!

Many businesses subscribe to what is called MUZAK a commercial background music service. They only pay for their subscription they do NOT pay royalties. Also companies can purchase a special business subscription to digital cable that carries 100 digital music channels to put on in their establishment.

if for one second you think that every doctor,dentist,lawyer,accountant,store,elevator and resturant in america pay's royalties to the RIAA you are mistaken... they pay for a service from a company that pay's the royalties.

And yes, if you want to you can put any broadcast radio station on in your establishment without paying the royalties as the RADIO STATION is "supposedly paying them" (although we know the bigger ones are getting payola to play the top 40 songs)

now if you grab a bunch of CD's and start playing them for the customers... then you are gonna have to pay... but 95% of the stores and businesses just turn on the radio or their music subscription (that has no adverts in it)

Re:What if...

[kevcol]

Wow- I was moderating but my jaw dropped when I read this and had to post:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/c ommunications/ASCAP.html

"They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts - they can pay for the music, too," says John Lo Frumento, ASCAP's chief operating officer. If offenders keep singing without paying, he says, we will sue them if necessary."

Re:What if...

[Maxwell_E]

As silly as it sounds, the report if sensationalized, is true. Well, true enough that ASCAP used to have a link on their website with some serious damage control and such.

Note the date:

http://www.ascap.com/press/ascap-082696.html
I remember reading the spin doctor from ASCAP on it and their position pretty quickly backpedaled on it. A quick search on google turned up the above link as well as this discussion:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/7397

Re:What if...

[Permission Denied]

Now, Ring Around the Rosie is a centuries old nursery rhyme that most know dates back to the time of the Black Death. I won't go into the details, but thats what it is about.

I had never heard this before. To verify, I typed "ring around the rosie" into google, and this is the first hit. here's the third hit from snopes.com, an interesting website which I would be inclined to believe.

The organisation in question is this:

[10Ghz]

www.teosto.fi

Please, Slashdot them!

Re:$103,600 speeding ticket

[chefren]

Since fines are income dependent in Finland, we should try to get Bill Gates to do some speeding here too.

finland is the country of endless royalties

[mkv]

You should know that here in Finland, we pay royalties in every cd-r, dvd-r (and other format medias), video cassette or whatever media we buy. Yes, if your company provides you with a signed certificate saying that you are going to use the media you buy for storing only work-related material, you get a discount but still the system sucks. Teosto, our trustee for supervising the interests of artists, is trying to get this royalty for hard disks also. Also, if you broadcast music legally via radio and stream your broadcast via internet also, you have to pay a "media conversion fee" of some sort.