Listening To The Radio At Work? Prepare To Be Sued

MLCT writes "The Performing Rights Society, one of the UK's royalties collecting societies, has taken a Scottish car servicing company to court because the employees are alleged to have been listening to the radio at work, allowing the music to be 'heard by colleagues and customers'. The PRS is seeking £200,000 in damages for the 'performances of the music' which they claim equates to copyright infringement. The judge, Lord Emslie, has ruled that the case can continue to hearing evidence, commenting that the key point to note was that music was 'audibly blaring from employee's radios'. Where do the extents of a 'public performance' end? Radios on in cabs?"

Comments

Somebody please, stop the madness

[j0e_average]

It is completely unreasonable to expect compensation for second-hand radio.

Re:Somebody please, stop the madness

[ediron2]

Heh... second-hand got me to thinking: imagine a second-hand-smoke victim receiving a countersuit by tobacco companies because they were able to inhale cigarette smoke they hadn't paid for.

This is about that absurd.

Theatrical broadcast implies a desire for an audience to hear the performance leading them to the venue. Charging admission shows enrichment. Venue must reimburse the artists in such a case. Sensible so far.

Muzak (or elevator music or bland background music, for those that don't know the slang) creates mood for a particular commercial location (restaurant, store, elevator, or even music-on-hold). This mood is carefully cultivated for whatever commercial goal by the vendor, so the vendor should be reimbursing artists for their help in making the store/restaurant mood.

But music played by workers at a construction site or a repair shop... that's for the benefit of the employees and usually at the expense of the customer. I'd no sooner wander down to the mechanic's to listen to his boom box than I'd want to eavesdrop off most strangers' ipods. Hell, I thought that was the greatest part of ipods: boomboxes became anachronistic jokes.

Charging royalties for unwanted intrusions of music is the most absurd damn thing I've ever heard of, and tries to claim economic value where none exists. It'd be like demanding royalties from the owners of all those noisy damn cars driving around with mega stereos in their trunks rattling my windows...

Hmm... on the other hand, maybe I'm in *favor* of this, if another wave of unwanted noiseboxes are silenced. Dumbass argument, desirable side effect.

Re:Somebody please, stop the madness

[Seumas]

I don't understand the point here.

Radio is supported by advertising. What does it matter if 500 people are listening to 500 radios or 500 are listening to a single radio? I understand that the idea is that "those are 500 people who will not be counted toward royalty payments", but since royalties are entirely calculated by the size of the listening audience -- how does it matter unless some of those 500 people are also part of some "Nielson" family? If they're all listening to separate radios, is some sort of magic going to occur where they can tell that 500 radios are turned on and to a specific station?

Re:Somebody please, stop the madness

[Rodyland]

I'd no sooner wander down to the mechanic's to listen to his boom box than I'd want to eavesdrop off most strangers' ipods. Hell, I thought that was the greatest part of ipods: boomboxes became anachronistic jokes.

Not sure where you travel, but on public transport here in Melbourne, the music coming out of some people's iPods could easily be called a public performance.

Re:Somebody please, stop the madness

[Capsaicin]

Here in the Netherlands you also have to pay outrageous amounts of money if you play music in your shop, or your cafe.

Really, you have to admire these guys for the amazing scam they've set up. First they get a copyright payment when the recording is sold (times the number of people who buy the recording). Next they get another payment when a radio station wants to license the right to 'perform' it (times the number of radio stations). Finally (?) they get yet another payment when anyone wants to play (the radio or the recording) in a public place (times the number of cafes, shops, etc etc).

Then the have the audacity to call this stuff intellectual property! What other species of property can you lease so many times simultaneously, without ever having to surrender your own use of it? Wicked!

Re:Somebody please, stop the madness

[rtb61]

But the real problem here is not the music but the radio. Consider the application of the law, if everybody walked into work or any other public space carrying and using their own radio, no one is infringing, the public broadcasting is being done in an electro magnetic spectrum which the radio is receiving and retransmitting. So the courts or the judge are being visibly corrupt in their interpretation of infrgingement.

It is already a licensed public transmission, only the number of devices used to alter the unencrypted signal to a human audible range is in question.

So it is a flagrant and complete corruption of the principles of copyright, which corrupt politicians in collusion with drunken drugged up minstrals have implemented to rip of and steal from the general public.

The only possible infringement would be a long since passed patent infringement on the process of converting the signal. So either the corrupt government stick to the law and administer justice and ban all personal listening devices in those locations and at those times or they accept the proper interpretation of the law and the number of devices used to play a publicly broadcast signal should not affect copyright.

By the current clearly dishonest interpretation, if I use more than one device at a time, so two radios at once, am I and the broadcaster entitled to a discount and pay half price, just like where two people listening to the same device should pay double.

A flagrant and glaring example of corporate and government corruption.

Re:Somebody please, stop the madness

[Bert64]

The listeners don't pay for content played on the radio directly, the radio station pays for the right to broadcast the music.
The radio station then makes money from advertisers, who advertise because they consider the listener base a large enough for their commercials.
The music being played on the radio is ALREADY LICENSED for people within range of the station to listen to it, and it's in the stations interest for more people to listen.
Those people who are close enough to the garage to hear the radio, are obviously within range of the radio station and could use their own radio to listen to it if they wanted. The fact that they're not using their own radio is helping the environment in a small way by saving power. I would imagine that virtually all of the customers of this car servicing company own their own radio too, because it's a really long time since i saw any kind of car which didn't have a radio fitted as standard.
Hopefully this ridiculous case will be thrown out with the servicing company being awarded compensation for the legal costs incurred defending against such a pointless suit.

Re:Somebody please, stop the madness

[init100]

The answer is simple. When their actions become so brash that the generally uninformed public becomes annoyed with them

That won't happen. People use the mainstream media as their sole information source about what's happening around the world, but surprise surprise, the news media companies are often the same companies running these lawsuits. And since they understand that this would sully their reputation, the simply keep the information out of the unwashed masses.

This works pretty good already. Few articles about copyrights, patents, etc, are ever published in mainstream media no matter how outrageous, while unimportant matters like Paris Hilton's last prison sentence or the latest reality TV star having a breast enlargement always make it to the front page.

Re:Somebody please, stop the madness

[Wylfing]

Those people who are close enough to the garage to hear the radio, are obviously within range of the radio station and could use their own radio to listen to it if they wanted.

That's really it. If there are 20 people in a room, and each of them has a radio, all tuned to the same station, this is apparently fine. The absurdity of this claim is that if they all listen to exactly the same content but from one radio instead of 20 radios, that's copyright infringement.

It's the law

[JustShootMe]

Oddly enough, it is the law. This law may make no sense, but if you want it changed, you have to contect your elected representatives and convince them to change it.

On the flip side, this is what happens when record companies get desperate. That is a good thing, it means they're losing.

I'm all for people getting compensated for their hard work, but by any standard, this is ridiculous.

(Are the headphone makers sponsoring this?)

On hold

[MichaelSmith]

Back when I worked for the state government road authority we ran a small call centre for breakdowns, etc. The audio switcher had an input for an on hold message and for a long time we fed in a signal from a commercial radio station.

The theory is that they are broadcasting N copies of their signal anyway, and a few extra listeners are also going to be hearing the advertisements which pay for the broadcast. It scales, so what is the problem?

More to the point, if I listen alone in my car and an advert comes on then I will change to a different station. If I am listening to somebody else's radio then I have to listen to the advert, so by that argument they should be encouraging people to share radios.

Missing the point of the social contract

[Endymion]

They can collect on "public performances" of the radio when they start paying me for trespassing on my property with all that RF.

This is not a copyright violation as it's "publicly performing" things that were already sent out over public airways. Really, it's almost equivalent to the idiots suing because people used the "hacking technology" of HTTP to get the files they publicly offered.

Advertising?

[deniable]

Isn't the point of radio to be listened to by as many people as possible. If your song gets airplay then people might buy your album. Wasn't that the whole point of payola? Plus, they get royalties each time the song is played.

This way they can cannibalize the radio audience for a few bucks and keep charging the same royalties. I think I should patent a business model.

I bet their next action is to sue people selling CDs. They'll go after a big offender like Virgin.

Re:They sure are greedy

[adona1]

I would be surprised if the artists collected anything from a lawsuit like this, except maybe a tarnished reputation.

Re:They sure are greedy

[Dunbal]

Why should the artists collect twice?

      This has nothing to do with the artists. In fact, the artists will never see a penny of this.

Re:They sure are greedy

[Anonymous Coward]

The artists collect twice??? What world do you live in? The artists get pocket change, everyone else involved with getting the music from the mouth/instrument of the artist to the ears of the audience gets most of it. It's the RIAA/ASCAP/BMI that wants you to pay, pay again, and then to change things up a bit, pay some more.

Re:sigh

[Dunbal]

Nah, I just download my music from some torrent site and burn my friends a copy. Are you saying you don't follow the procedure?

I'm all for it!

[Cleon]

Between this and the RIAA's campaign of suing grandmothers and 12-year-olds, I say--more power to 'em!

The more the recording industry engages in these batshit-crazy pursuits of extra money, the more people will come to realize that the entire "intellectual property" legal system needs to be completely rethought. The EFF can only dream of being able to this kind of support; these bozos manage to do the job well enough on their own.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Simple

[OrangeTide]

A radio with a tape or CD in it does violate the rules on public performances. A radio pulling broadcast off an antenna does not, because the royalties are already paid by the radio station. And are being played on public airwaves for anyone to receive.

There are no damages when a radio is played in public, the advertising gets sent out to even more people, and the radio station makes money and the recording company makes money. There can be no damages due to loss, only the Chinese company that makes the radios can claim there was some sort of damage, and that is outside the scope of copyright laws.

I am not a lawyer, nor am I familiar with UK case precedence, so like most people on Slashdot, my opinion counts for diddlysquat.

Re:End to elevator music?

[TheDugong]

Nope. Worse, it will perpetuate it.

Elevator music exists because royalties exist. Basically, someone/an organization puts together a CD (or whatever) of crappy/cheasy compositions (what we know as "elevator music") and sells it with a license allowing it to be played in public. This is much cheaper (and easier) than negotiating with individual record companies and artists.

Elevator music aptly demonstrates how copyrights promote the arts.

Re:Not Surprising

[Kohath]

Yeah. This has been the rule for how many decades now?

It seems like every week, Slashdot will get outraged about some extremely old news. Outraged!

"What's next?", they ask. Well, it's been 20 or 50 years, so what was next?

Re: Wow

[gpw213]

IANAL, but a bit of googling found references to section 110(5) of the Music Licensing Act of 1998. The best summary of the legalese I found was:

Now the Music Licensing Act draws the line between private and public in terms of the type of public establishment, the size, and the stereo equipment used. Restaurants and bars under 3,750 square feet or retail establishments under 2,000 square feet are exempt from paying fees for playing radio or TV broadcasts for their customers. Public places of any size that play radio or TV broadcasts are exempt from paying fees if they use no more than six external speakers (not more than four speakers in each room) for playing music. Public places that play CDs or hire live musicians (that play cover songs or copy songs) are still subject to being licensed for fees.

You can lose the private home exemption and be subject to a license if you charge anyone admission fees to listen to music.

Also, I have often heard that a favorite tactic of the Muzak salesmen is to completely ignore this, and try to convince shop owners they find playing the radio that they are violating copyright, and try to get them to sign up to avoid liability. Apparently, this constitutes fraud, but they are rarely called on it. I don't know if the BMI/ASCAP people do the same sorts of things or not.

I hope this case gets slapped down hard by the UK court system, this is pretty ridiculous.

Re:I know one person who won't object

[digitig]

The prohibition on public performance without royalties is more like if you played a CD in front of a crowd of people and somehow charged them money for this (has this ever happened in the history of recorded music?). DJs do it all the time.

Re:seriously???

[LWATCDR]

Actually it was more of a comment to all the EU is great the US sucks bashers that I see here on Slashdot. I just hope that the EU doesn't get as carried away with personal injury lawsuits as the US has. There is a place by my office that has cups with this warning label. "Warning Hot Drinks served Hot..."

Many years ago I was in Ireland and went to visit some cliffs. There was a wall on meter tall well back from the cliffs. On that wall as a warning sign to not cross go past that wall. Everybody was just stepping over the wall and walking right up to the cliffs. I did the same and the view was great. I asked one of the locals why the wall was so easy to climb over. I mentioned that in the US if they did that and fell they would sue the daylight out of somebody.
The man looked at me and said, "In Ireland we figure that if you step over the wall and fall it is your own bloody fault."
Smart people the Irish.