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Singer In Grocery Store Ordered To Pay Royalties
yog writes "An assistant at a grocery store in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, was ordered by the Performing Right Society (PRS) to obtain a performer's license and to pay royalties because she was informally singing popular songs while stocking groceries. The PRS later backed down and apologized. This after the same store had turned off the radio after a warning from the PRS. We have entered an era where music is no longer an art for all to enjoy, but rather a form of private property that must be regulated and taxed like alcohol. 'Music to the ears' has become 'dollars in the bank'."
That's what this is.
The idea that fining someone for singing to themself while they work. The idea that this could be in any way the right course of action.
There's no other words/term for it.
Maybe if it is read verbatim from their dictionary in a place where it can be used to increase a businesses profit. To these royalty groups, it isn't a problem for you to listen to it or to sing the lyrics. However, if it is used as a way to influence customers such that the business see financial gain...
Capitalism? Copyright is a form of government regulation on what would otherwise be a free market. It would be more capitalist to abolish copyright.
(Disclaimer: I do not want to abolish copyright.)
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
This is a logical extension of current lunatic copyright laws: the IP Barons want a cut every time anyone, anywhere, performs a song they claim to 'own'. The next step will be to require everyone to wear brain-scanners so that they can charge us every time we 'play' a song inside our heads from memory.
The whole concept of Imaginary Property leads directly to this kind of stupidity, because the very idea of being able to 'own' something which has no physical existence is quite simply insane.
I guess it is time to sue the music industry for putting songs in our head.
The best way to get them to START verifying their facts then would be to treat the times they fall for hoaxes as if it's true. And let them realize they should verify info before it destroys their reputation.
As far as I'm concerned, The PRS's apology was more like an unofficial "I'm sorry, I didn't realize we can't get away with that just yet."
It already has. It's called rent seeking, and there's no shortage of examples. Certainly, overzealous copyright enforcement, patent trolling, and the like are examples we commonly see here, but they're by no means the only ones. Look at the ISPs that have crushed proposed municipal wifi plans before they could even get started, by bribing^Wencouraging lawmakers to pass laws against it the moment it was proposed. Another example is the desire of ISPs to charge for "all you can eat" plans while then throttling what you can actually do with them. That's the same type of behavior we're seeing here.
There are plenty of examples outside the tech sector as well. We had an article a few days ago about predatory student loan practices, and that's been studied quite a bit already. Telecom/cable companies' frequent monopoly/duopoly structure in most areas. The inability to become certified in many areas without a college degree even if you can prove your competence (benefitting, of course, colleges). The list goes on and on.
I'm not honestly sure that's not a consequence of trying to apply capitalism to a resource (information) which is naturally not scarce, and can only be made so through draconian rules and enforcement. With computers, it's not difficult at all to perfectly and quickly replicate most types of information, there's no real scarcity of it at all, only artificial, legally enforced scarcity. If I were in the business of selling nothing dressed up as something, and the only way people paid me was when they were forced to, I guess I might be tempted to overuse force too.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Everyone here is going to talk about how outrageous it is for a supermarket to be charged for playing the radio, but the fact of the matter is that they use the radio to create a pleasant environment for their customers, which makes it a tool of commerce. Songwriters are the ones who get compensated for this, and rightfully so: people are using the fruits of their labor (music) to help sell merchandise. The supermarket is a business, and licensing the music is part of the cost of doing business. It has been this way for many, many years; we are not entering a new age of PRS thuggery. Without due diligence on this and other fronts, professional songwriters (who are not, by the by, a particularly wealthy lot) would not have an income. And please don't make the claim that songwriters get paid for years for 5 minutes of work, because they write far more songs that get rejected or fail commercially than are successful. It's a job, and not an easy one.
As for the woman being asked to get a license, yes, that is absurd. Probably the representative of the PRS who made the request was new and overeager to please his or her boss, or was maybe just a douchebag. Who knows. It was a truly boneheaded maneuver.
Full disclosure: I'm a songwriter and a member of a PRS. The money I make a year on songwriting could maybe buy a nice dinner. Without someone looking out for my interests, I'd make nothing.
Copyright wouldn't exist but hellish drm would. Also you could argue it is capitalism that is making copyright evil. You could argue that copyright exists because money made it happen in a capitalist society. .... .... that's all I got.
Courts are also a form of government regulation. Without them, you couldn't have contracts. Sounds like fun capitalism to me, not having contracts...
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Capitalism? Copyright is a form of government regulation on what would otherwise be a free market. It would be more capitalist to abolish copyright.
What's not capitalist about it? It's treating ideas and expression as a form of capital. It would be very un-capitalist not to exploit that for gain.
... and then they built the supercollider.
The company didn't realize anything. They were cowed into submission by an understandably outraged public.
Everyone knows that news outlets are 95% of time totally correct. The other 5% of the time, its stuff I know about.
Honestly even smart scientists note just how bad they are at covering anything even remotely technical that they know about. And yet assume every other story in that very paper/web site is 100% correct.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
They are testing the waters.
We're very sorry we made a big mistake. We hear you have a lovely singing voice and we wish you good luck.
Which is lawyer-speak for "Our next target will be someone with a lot less public exposure, and much less ability to defend against our accusations in court."
Not all regulation is created equal. Copyright law and court enforcement of contracts are not equivalent regulations. The former regulation (copyright law) interferes with the natural tendencies of the free market, rendering it less capitalist, while the latter regulation (court enforcement of contracts) does no such interfering.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Not really much difference between the current system and outright anarchy when people can sue you to death.
Replace "bastard feudal lord from hell" with "giant corporation", and "peasant" with "individual" and you will find things have really not much changed.
Creative Commons music is a good thing.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
Hmmmm, sounds familiar... Oh yes! That's what the Taliban did to a whole country.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
and your spell checker gets a module that suggests cheaper words to use in your sentences. And it takes in account the extra tax on words the government doesn't like. You can still write what you want but some things are really costly..
It requires scarcity to function.
Which is why people are knocking down houses in the USA...
e.g.
http://www.yidio.com/unsold-houses-knocked-down/id/395665281
http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=19580208
If demand is ever satisfied, the value of the product tends to zero and therefore it is impossible to make profit or to pay the loans which make up our monetary system. This is why there will always be poverty, always be homelessness, and is of course insanity and stupidity of the highest order.
Silvio Gesell identified this particular fundamental problem (and proposed a solution) with the nature of money itself nearly 100 years ago.
Deleted
To people outside the UK, charging you for playing the radio makes no damn sense. After all, the radio station already pays for the music (if it's a standard broadcast) or *you* already pay for the music if it's satellite or CD.
The only reason people like the OP can rationalize the PRS is because they're looking at it through the lens of a culture in which it's the status quo. You see this all the time - people rationalizing or even praising elements of their particular culture that MAKE NO GODDAMN SENSE. I'm not sure whether it's done out of a sort of misplaced nationalism, a lack of imagination, or something else. But it's the only explanation I can think of for the defense of the indefensible, whether it's the PRS, the American health care system, or any other country's unique psychosis.
The irony is that for the vast majority of musicians in the UK, the burden the PRS puts on people is vastly disproportionate to the benefit received. Again, take the original poster - would s/he give up that one dinner a year in order to save business owners the incredible hassle of dealing with the PRS? Not to mention the massive amount of money the PRS must spend on enforcement, which reduces the artists' cut. If the PRS moved to a system where royalties for recording sales and broadcast were higher, and eliminated the tax on playing music in public, how much more profitable would they be?
DRM is not a problem if it's not protected by law. There's not a scheme that's been devised yet that cannot be cracked. The problem with DRM is that it is illegal to circumvent it and it has been mandated for some devices. Remove that legal protection and the content providers can add it all they like.
We're very sorry we made a big mistake. We hear you have a lovely singing voice and we wish you good luck.
Which is lawyer-speak for "Our next target will be someone...much less ability to defend against our accusations in court."
Than some old dear who works in a grocery store?
This is an oops. That it's an oops that is pertinent to the whole copywrong clusterfuck is of interest to Slashdotters (and should be, but isn't, of interest to Joe Public), but it is an oops nonetheless.
Intellectual property rights are just an extension of that.
The propaganda purpose of calling it 'property' is exactly to trick people into falling for that fallacy. In reality it is nothing like property, even diametrically opposed in some aspects.
Property rights do not prevent production of copies, they do not enforce scarcity and they do not interfere with other peoples ownership of their property.
Intellectual 'property' on the other hand is essentially a time limited taxation right, a monopolistic right that gives someone the governments blessing to tax and control any copies made. It enforces scarcity, and it takes away the right of everyone else to do what they wish with their property, including copying, modifying and displaying it.
"incredulous at best", eh? Don't use words that you don't understand. It makes an otherwise good post seem childish.
Because the "idiot" is a license salesman paid on commission. S/he has no interest in the rights and wrongs beyond selling as many licenses as possible in order to maximise his/her commission.
What's gone wrong here is pretty similar with what went wrong with traffic wardens (parking regulation enforcement officers) in the UK. At one time they were employed by the state on salary. And they'd see it as their duty to keep traffic moving. And if they saw someone about to park in the wrong place, they would go and warn them. Now, they are outsourced, and paid on commission by the number of parking tickets issued. So now they act as huntsmen, hiding themselves around the corner from where they know people tend to park illegally, and jumping out to claim a scalp as often as they can. On occasion lying about the offence in order to issue a ticket where none should have been issued.
People in quazi-official enforcement roles should be seen as impartial appliers of rules and regulations. They should never be paid on commission. That's what's gone wrong here.
CDs are for personal use, and priced accordingly. That's fair. The radio thing is a bit weird, since radio is all about broadcast, but I suppose that is to stop nightclubs using radio to avoid paying hefty music license fees.
Still, it's horrendous that our common culture (popular songs, catchphrases, etc) are now all copyright. People used to sing folk songs, but now these have been replaced with pop songs. Perhaps we need some creative common songs?
It's obvious that the big distributors are following Microsoft's strategy. Get popular and crush the competition, then extract money from whoever has big pockets.
More than likely they apologized only because this started to generate negative news. Why didn't they realize they were "going too far" earlier? Like, oh I don't know... before they sent her a demand for money? The should have realized long before this became news that they had no right to demand payment.
This is extortionist behavior on the part of the PRS (and other similar groups). Strike hard and first seems to be the guiding rule in these types of cases, without even considering the facts.
I fear the PRS would simply start asking for payments from companies who _own_ equipment that _can_ be used to listen to radio stations that fall under the PRS licence rules. Whether or not the equipment actually _is_ used to listen to said radio stations is something the PRS could disregard completely.
Disclaimer: I live in Sweden, not the UK.
But we have got something very similar: our version of the BBC has started making a lot of its material accessible via the web. So suddenly everybody who owns a computer and has an internet connection is required to pay the TV-reciever fee....
The solution to this entire issue is to download, download and download some more. Bittorrent-style, of course. Do not pay a single cent into this system anymore. And then, when your favorite band comes to town go see and support them and buy their bloody T-Shirt. Make your money go where your ears are and cut out the middlemen!
No *true* Scotsman would enforce copyrights...
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
If that is the case, it's probably worth noticing how easily everyone took to the idea that this was the action of the PRS as a body, not some rogue worker.
I doubt this is a hoax. This happens quite a lot in Australia, but it doesn't usually get quite so much publicity, and it usually happens to night clubs, pubs, private halls, radio stations and similar.
The regulatory body over here which primarially deals with this is called the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), basically if you want to perform a copy righted work, you need to obtain licensing.
For instance I work for a small organization which uses some of it's land for small private concerts, of a maximum of 20 people, generally playing classical works, though occasionally other stuff. Under Australian law we had to obtain licensing through APRA for us to be able to hold these private events.
A friend of the family used to work for them and although they believed in what they were doing (They saw it as standing up for the rights of the artists against profiteering companies), they did have stories on how some businesses couldn't/wouldn't pay the licensing fees, so they monitored the events closely and pursed legal action. Though in most cases the businesses just give up. Though they did have stories of how they omnipotently gave the licensing, regardless of the businesses right to pay, for the good of the people. Both of which made me sick.
Anyhow, I took this person to task on the topic one night and suffice to say we're not family friends with them anymore.
I think it's for the best.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It's obvious that the big distributors are following Microsoft's strategy. Get popular and crush the competition, then extract money from whoever has big pockets.
I think you'll find that has been the music industry M.O. for as long as there has been a recording industry. MS is the relative newb when it comes to such behavior.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
No, they don't play the radio to make a pleasant environment for their customers. They play the radio to make spending a day waiting on the general public go by a little quicker and to give them something to listen to while they stock shelves or install muffler systems, or whatever else they're doing.
It's music being broadcast for all to hear. Why should the supermarket pay royalties and the guy in the car with his windows down not have to? If they're playing MUZAK or a CD, fine, they should be paying for that music, but paying for broadcast radio doesn't make sense.
If you're not getting compensated fairly, talk to the radio stations playing your music, don't go after the people listening to it. It's *broadcast* -- thrown out over the airwaves for whoever wants it.
Except, of course, that the PRS would require some kind of proof that the music you were playing was nothing to do with them to stop hounding you. The kind of proof that involves lawyers and legal fees. Even if you wrote your own original compositions, recorded them to CD and played them the PRS would still demand money on the offchance that you would back down rather than go to court to defend your right to play music you wrote that has nothing to do with them.
www.nodicerpg.com - Some RP stuff for free, some not so for free, but still cheap.
Replace "bastard feudal lord from hell" with "giant corporation", and "peasant" with "individual" and you will find things have really not much changed.
You really haven't read much history have you? Take a look at what feudal society was like and then try and tell me with a straight face that there is not much difference between what we have today and the feudal system.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It's one of those things in the UK - if you have a business and want to play music to your customers you have to pay a flat royalty fee of around 65 pounds each year. There was a local business (hairdresser) who had kept the radio in the front room and hadn't been paying this fee for 20 years, and was forced to go into liquidation over this.
We have enforcement organizations like that in the US too. We call them the Mafia.
I don't understand how they can make you pay for collecting and translating electromagnetic radiation that is incident upon your property. If they don't like you having their signal, they should stop distributing it for free or provide you with ad-free music for a fee.
I suppose that is to stop nightclubs using radio to avoid paying hefty music license fees.
The music industry already has that one covered. They made all radio stations so shitty that nobody wants to listen to them for anything more than background noise, such as when you're driving somewhere and forgot to put any decent music in the car. Besides, no business can gain any proprietary advantage from something that is broadcast freely to everyone. That would be like saying that a restaurant can gain an advantage by serving tap water. But if the music industry can use this illogical logic to convince legislators to put more money in their pockets, they will of course do so.
I don't know about Britannia, but here in the U.S. we the people have a simple fix:
"Amendment 28: Strike the phrase 'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;'."
If the 50 states want to provide for copyright protection they still can, but the central government's power will be nullified, and the People will again be free to play (or sing) music and enjoy being alive.
While we're at it we should also pass Amendment 29: "Rights and privileges, both enumerated and non-enumerated, shall only apply to individual human beings, not groups or organizations." No more free speech for corporations; no more lobbying by Microsoft or bribes from RIAA. They will have no more rights than a rock or tree.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall