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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.
I don't know how the airwaves work in Finland, but in the US I would assume that's why they are called public airwaves. The stations pay royalties and in turn collect advertising revenue. Whatever.
Anyway does this apply to only music stations? What if they listen to the Finnish equivalent of NPR? Or the BBC?
sig
More proof that the RIAA is ripping off artists. When Napster was required to remove all songs under RIAA copyright, the RIAA was supposed to provide a list. They couldn't. IIRC, they just insisted that Napster should somehow *know* which ones were and which ones weren't.
Perhaps this will be used as an argument for DRM, Hollings Style!
Okay, say you're in a carpool to and fro work. Everyone chips in for gas and whatnot while you listen to your latest mix CD, you're travelling for business - but not as a business. Probably, no - you won't pay. But what about a business trip?
But what if you're using a company car to go pick up Vinnie The Venture Capitalist at the airport and you play a mix of his favorite music. Do you have to pay then?
What about a birthday party for little Alex? Do I have to pay for playing his favorite mp3 playlist over my home stereo?
oh, but it is!
Girls Scouts must pay to sing songs...
"Starting this summer, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers has informed camps nationwide that they must pay license fees to use any of the four million copyrighted songs written or published by Ascap's 68,000 members. Those who sing or play but don't pay, Ascap warns, may be violating the law."
the story
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
As fscking absurd as it is, if you did that you'd already be paying if you burnt your music on CD-Rs you bought here. The Finnish equivalent of RIAA gets a certain fee from each sale of a recordable media - CD-Rs, tapes, possibly even harddrives. Fortunately I don't know how big that percentage is - I'd probably go insane if I did... It really pisses me off since the money is supposed to go to Finnish artists (probably just the RIAA equivalent) to compensate for illegal copying of their works and I don't even listen to Finnish "artists" (yes the quotation marks imply what I think of 99.9% of Finnish music...)
Karma. Moderation. Is my
Billboards, my friend. Billboards.
Winston Churchill: THE WAR SITUATION: HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS, broadcast, London, January 20, 1940
So, here we are back at the Dark Ages!
Here in the USA the copyright laws regarding the radio are quite a bit more liberal. They state that you may play a radio in your place of business without paying a royalty if the radio is: "self contained and unmodified". In other words, it must be a standard radio without extension speakers such as a boom box that uses it's own internal speakers. I would assume that a factory installed car radio would also qualify though an aftermarket one would probably fall into a gray area. The court case (what else?) that decided this is known as the "Gap" case, after the clothing chain of the same name. They had installed component stereos with multiple speakers in all their stores and got pinched for playing the radio through them. They were found liable because they were using multiple extension speakers. These days, many retail establishments and restaurants don't play the radio. Instead they sign up for a service such as Digital Music Express (DMXmusic.com)that pay blanklet rates to Ascap, BIM and Sesac. A side to this story is that yesterday two commonly owned radio stations in Pittsburgh got pinched for infringing on Sesac's copyright to the tune of 1.5 million dollars.
I had to destroy a recording of Handel's Messiah. I handled the recording and also played in the bass section. Our orchestra scores were clear, but the choir sung from sheets that were "arranged" after the end of copy rights, 1922.
Go to the Harry Fox Agency and you will find dozens of people claiming copyright on Handel's Messiah one way or another.
It was for a small run, fund raising CD and the licensing hassles outweighed the benefits so we destroyed the recording. Still its great fun to perform it. If anyone asks you, you should accept.
Hymns have similar problems. You need to work from a pre-1922 hymnal to be clear, but you can't buy those.
I have a similar problem with traditional folk music. Everyone and their dog that ever published an album for a label with a traditional song claims ownership. I have to find documentation that the song predates 1922 to use it royalty free.
We were in this really old diner, and every booth had holes in the wall above the table. I asked my dad why that might be, and he said for the jukebox. He said that a long time ago every booth was wired for its own speaker, and had a coinbox - patrons could put in coins in the box, punch up a song, and the speaker delivered the music right to their table. They made a lot of money, so of course a lawsuit ensued.
The restaurant owners wanted to keep the money, because they paid for the equipment to be installed in their restaurants. The record companies wanted the money because, without them, there would not have been any music to play. They reasoned, that the patrons were paying for the music, not the use of the music delivery system. Furthermore, the music brought in customers to the restaurant that it would not otherwise have had. Therefore, the restaurants owed them.
Ultimately, the music companies won the lawsuits and the fancy jukeboxes were ripped out. Thus the holes in the wall above the table.
FWIW, my dad said that the music companies (and later jukebox service vendors) were often run by organized crime. That was a long time ago.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
I always hate having to ask the cabbie to turn off the damn radio. I feel bad because I've already asked him to get off the cell phone, and I'm lowering the tip by a dollar for every request I'm forced to make. This makes absolutely no sense since the radio is obviously only for the drivers benefit, it being in the front of the cab after all. I could see some people paying an extra 25 cents for turning on a back seat radio, but the cabbie's radio is just a nuisance for the rider.
The problem with that story is that it has crucial flaws that make me disbelieve the whole thing.
To wit:
"How about Ring Around the Rosie'?" another Elf asks. The directors veto it.
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.
It isn't copyrighted. And it taints the entire story with a dose of FUD. Or perhaps it's just satire.
My daughter is a brownie. Her leaders know nothing at all about this supposed case.
Does anyone have a reputable report of this?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
>> It's the same thing as running a TV or radio in the waiting room of a business.
I've noticed when I go to a bar/restaurant, the game is usually on the tube as usual, but the sound is off, closed captioning is on. I assumed this was because noone needs the chatter.
The other day I happened to look closer at the TV. There's a little sign saying something like "This TV cannot be used with the sound on, due to public broadcasting restrictions", or some such.
Can anyone clarify? I'm not talking about PPV events here, either, but the football game on fox sunday, etc.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
ASCAP uses "spies" to find this kind of thing. They literally pay people to go into bars/stores/restaurants etc. and listen for music. If they hear music, and you're not paying, you get a nasty letter from a lawyer. This happened to my favorite bar a while back (it was a hole in the wall, the patrons held an auction once a month to keep the lights on and the door open, lets put it that way... but we liked it. Dartboard, pool table, Guinness) I think we found out who the infiltrator was, but the legal threat and resultant bills were just another of the straws that broke the camel's back. Here's the kicker: they weren't pissed about the jukebox, and there wasn't a radio. Just a TV that was on when it was slow and the bartender was bored (although they would probably try to charge you for the customers hearing the background music on the car commercials). No, they were upset because there was a small, unknown, local startup band that did a gig in there. They did (what they thought) was an old Irish folk tune. Nope. That song was on the list, busted, if you don't want to fight us in court pay up. Fucking bastards. We couldn't afford to pay everyone that wanted a cut, it was sort of a bar that was just there for people that liked it and no one really wanted to change it; it was just one of those places that had been there forever. Done. Gone. Dead. Could the patrons afford to keep the landlord happy? Yeah. Could we keep the city off our back? Yeah again, did both for a while. Could we afford a lawyer to fight the recording industry over inadvertant infractions that we had no control over? NO. If you have live music, it seems, you have to know every song on the playlist, know who if anyone has the rights on it, and pay accordingly. If you don't know and you can't afford legal help, you can't have live music once they sic onto you. Then your establishment dies if that's what brings people in. A big FUCK YOU to the recording industry is in order here. And of course, no suggestions on what should be done to ASCAP infiltrators if their cover is blown, although I'm sure you can imagine some :)