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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.
Now, this just in. If you listen to music, while someone other than the person who bought the CD is in the room, you must pay $20 annually to RIAA.
That is all.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
That's almost more outrageous than the tarrifs you have to pay when entering and exiting San Fransisco in a taxi. Sheesh!
...they sing to the customer in the backseat? Would they still have to pay royalty fees?
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
How will the authorities know if the taxi driver had the radio turned on or off? Will they have a sting operation where an undercover officer hails a taxi, gets in, and then busts the the driver if they turn on the radio but haven't payed the fee?
The slashdot editors owe me a buck for everybody that reads this comment.
Man, this is getting to a level of stupidity that makes me wonder if I should go back home to Pluto ...
This is getting out of hand. Will someone please punish these people and send them to bed without their royalties?
If you use copyrighted materials for public performance for benefit of the business, you have to pay extra.
It's the same thing as running a TV or radio in the waiting room of a business. The business is getting a benefit from the music, so they have to pay a cut.
There's also a group of old ladies who go to restraunts and pretend that one of them is having a birthday. If one of the employees sings "Happy Birthday" a copywrited song, they sue. This apparently keeps them in bingo money.
I hate it too, but that's the law. If you don't like it, get filthy stinking rich, and buy new ones.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
RADIO listens to you!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
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!
Depends on the copyright of the songs. If they were all public domain, no.
Now, all the driver would have to do is prove it. Annually. With expensive lawyers.
Yes, he would have to go to court to prove it, because the local RIAA clone would want to make it expensive to buck their system. To that end, they would benefit from spending several thousand to bring doubt into the mind of a jury that he really didn't stick to public domain music only.
Then, after 'proving' him a liar, they'd hit him with punitive damages as hard as possible to keep all the other sheep in line.
Things are getting bad, and they're only going to get worse. This crap will continue.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
This makes me wonder how the taxi driver fits into this picture at all, economically speaking. Are the taxi drivers making money off of the radio? Do they charge people extra to listen to the radio? Do people frequent taxi services that play the radio more often than those who don't? Probably not, so why are they being forced to pay up? It just seems wrong.
Phew... that's a load off my mind... cause I'm sure the RIAA or their equivalent in Finland (unlike cab drivers) are *really* hurting for money... and I hope this serves as a precedent for anybody that plays music in their workplace... because God forbid, when I go see my accountant, and he's got the radio playing in the background, that filthy pirate is stealing the fruits of hard labor by the record executives...
-jag
http://starboard.flowtheory.net/
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?
I believe they want to charge cab drivers because taxi services are businesses that make money. By playing the radio, you are "enhancing" the taxi ride experience, and the music industry thinks they should be compensated. I don't necessarily agree with this philosophy, so don't flame me please. Just thought I'd point out what the issue is really about.
Vote for Pedro
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...
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.
You rape record label!
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!
The UN has just welcomed its newest member, the Recording Industry Assosciation (formerly known as Finland). The RIA spokesman stated "We are so glad to be here, and by the way we have evidence that Saddam Hussien is illegally listening to Britney Spears in his bath tub and as such have ordered a preemptive first strike".
When commercial radio plays, the radio station usually pays whatever fees are associated with the music they are playing. Those fees are often paid by the sponsors who also have their advertisements played on those same airwaves.
The fees are already paid whether or not someone listens to it. This is double taxation... paying for something that has already been paid for. What kind of moronic nonsense is this?
Should cab drivers be allowed to show movies in their cabs?
This isn't the same thing. The question should read 'should cab drivers be allowed to show commercial TV in their cabs' - complete with all the commercials which are already being used to pay the fucking royalties on whatever is shown in the 'non-ad' breaks.
If each person in the cab had their own radio set it wouldn't be a public performance, but because they're listening to exactly the same material from a shared speaker it becomes public. This is definitely the sort of reasoning of someone who can afford to buy their own congressman. Any sane person would throw it straight out.
The radio station has already paid the right for a public performance, and anyone who wants to listen to that performance (and suffer the ads) should be free to do so.
So the Finns think they can just make ridiculous legal decisions like this and get away with it? Only the U.S. court system is allowed to make rulings as cockeyed as this. What is going to happen when just any old roomful of judges can sit down and issue rulings as hilarious as this one? Why it's just not right I tell you! Here's hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't let this one slip by and gets in touch with the folks at The Hague, ASAP. I mean, after all, this is a matter of national pride.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I used to think it would be cool to live in Finland. I thought they were a mellow, friendly, low-key kinda country. They are hard asses. Check out this link about traffic some fines in Finland... HARDCORE. Looks like they base their fines on a percentage of your YEARLY income... doh!
I seriously wish other countries would be equally harsh. It encourage people to actually drive responsibly. Perhaps it would the 50000 odd annual traffic deaths in th U.S.
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.
This logic already exists in the US, but it's not the territory of the RIAA, it's the territory of ASCAP/BMI.
This is the toll-master of the music publishing business. Whenever a song by the artist formerly known as Prince (but now again known as Prince) has a song played, he gets a clink in the bank. If Tom Jones remakes another one of his songs (God please no), then Prince gets more money as his music is published through ASCAP/BMI.
ASCAP/BMI assures that those who write music are paid for it when it is used, regardless who sings it. It's actually not a bad system because it assures that song writers like Burt Bacharach keep churning out music, and bad singers keep recording them.
Where it goes horribly wrong is that the record companies themselves seem to be pretty much exempt from the ASCAP/BMI fees. ASCAP/BMI seems to concentrate on radio stations, the music-on-hold for businesses, bars, Muzak and now, Finish taxicabs.
Now and again, when you walk into a dance club or bar, you'll see a yellow sticker proudly displayed with the letters ASCAP. It means that this bar owner actually paid his yearly fees.
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.
The law is not written in C. Unless you used the C to write a fuzzy logic processor and then used.... well never mind. It's not simply black and white. Remember that next time lament that all is lost.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
It is another way of destroying your rights. If they make it 20 dollars it isn't too bad. But after you get used to the 20 dollars which isn't right, but you feel is worth it not to fight the fight, maybe you will get used to 30, 40, 50, 100, 1000 dollars a year.
Even if it were 1 Penni, I would say no.
--Joey
Most cab drivers play the radio for their pleasure, not the passenger's. I can't remember the last time a driver asked me what I'd like to hear; and their tastes always differ from mine. So we already know that they aren't "adding value" to their facilities.
Intellectual property is self-maximizing: if something can be charged for, it will be charged for; and property holders will always seek out more opportunities for extortion (e.g., Licensing 6).
What the media cartels are trying to do here is look for every venue where licensing could conceivably apply, regardless of how absurd. Cafés, I'm sure, will be next (Starbucks already licenses the tracks on their playlists, then redistribute/resell them as compilations; other coffeehouses subscribe to satellite radio. The way I see it, every place of business that plays something other than Muzak will be charged for the privilege of advertising the cartel's content.
Also from the article: An ASCAP spokesman says "Kumbaya" isn't on its list, but "God Bless America" is.
You know, seeing the U.S. Congress struggle through a spontaneous rendition of 'God Bless America' on TV while downtown Manhattan went up in flames outside my window last September really disturbed me. the idea of ASCAP suing Congress for royalties actually gives me a strange sense of justice.
is if they start a royalty rate for all people present in the car during a car pool. Everytime you buy a CD, you must fill out a form stating how many friends you have and how often they drive with you while listening to music. ...RIAA is just getting out of hand... when is someone going to stop them??
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.
... and if you quote me, that's $5 a quote.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Don't worry, folks. I'm in the process of securing trademarks for "Copyright" and "Trademark" .. and the patent office is about to approve my requests for patents on "method for obtaining compensation for others' transgressions" (lawsuits), and "method for securing rights of use for a model, practice, or invention" (obtaining patents).
/.-reading lawyers wanna get rich with me?
By mid 2003, I'll be ready to sue the bejesus out of the RIAA and MPAA and any other abusive company that's been pissing us off along the way. On that note, any
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
www.teosto.fi
Please, Slashdot them!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Since fines are income dependent in Finland, we should try to get Bill Gates to do some speeding here too.
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.
The secret to a successful
Maybe I need to pay a fee if I sing a song while walking down the street. (``demand payments for any public performance of copyrighted material'')
... and be sued for siging Bob Dylan songs.
Maybe I should invoice the song writer for promoting the meme that is his song.
Maybe I could point this out to the next obnoxious git that sits next to me on a train with a zzz zzzz zzzzz coming out of his walkman -- peace at last.
Maybe this isn't in the long term interest of the song writers. If guides/scouts don't sing the songs, then the kids won't learn them but will learn other ones. These are the ones that they will remember in later life and want to buy the records/....
Maybe we ought to organise a public rally/demonstration
Maybe we ought to write Open songs and publicise them.
Maybe we ought to get RMS to write the GNU Public Song Licence.
Maybe this could lead to a resurgance in classical music, most of which is out of copyright. There are performers who allow their interpretation to be played without fee.
Maybe cab drivers should include a 'hire of radio' as part of their fee. It is then up to the passenger to choose to play the radio that is (for a few minutes) theirs.
Maybe cab drivers should invoice the local radio station for increasing their audience figures and thus what they can charge their advertisers.
Maybe this sort of thing is a good thing. People will become so fed up with it that the politicians will see lost votes in it.