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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'."
What's next? Concise Oxford charging for words explained in the dictionary?
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.
As much as I think this kind of enforcement is ridiculous, before we try to get rid of it we should try to put it to good use: someone needs to get the scientologists to start singing top hits as part of their 'religion'. That would create a (lawyer) fight I would pay to watch.
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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.
She's an old f'*k that sings, hence disturbing my personal belief of finding my true love while grocery-shopping.
In the fuits section.
While testing melons.
Juicy... melons ... garrrr ...
I guess it is time to sue the music industry for putting songs in our head.
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.
Just for this, I'm gonna download TWICE as many mp3 tonight to show those corporate FAT CATS they can't push around the little guy!
Yes, she was ordered to pay royalties. However, shortly afterward, the company sent her flowers, and issued a formal apology (ie, they realized they went *way* too far).
and I quote the article...
"In a note attached to a large bouquet of flowers they said: "We're very sorry we made a big mistake. We hear you have a lovely singing voice and we wish you good luck." "
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!
...the estate of John Cage to sue everyone all the time for unlicensed performance of 4'33"
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.
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Deleted
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..
You meant "awful", not "aweful". I suppose the problem was that you didn't want to pay Concise Oxford?
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?
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.
They're vastly overcompensating for lost revenues.
Too right, how many people would say "I was going to buy that music but now I can just go and listen to the guy stacking shelves in the grocery store to sing it instead"?
If you think it's a hoax, you probably don't know the PRS. The PRS pay their royalty collectors on commission. They have no interest at all in whether the target of their attentions are morally or legally required to purchase a license. They want to sell one to them regardless. This is just the latest of many such news stories of some of the ridiculous extremes their operatives have tried to extort money from people.
How hard would it be for some enterprising radio station to only play GPL/Free/Whatever-isn't-commercial music that the PRS had no jurisdiction over...
They would quickly be the ONLY radio station that business could listen to ( freely ) and they could sue the PRS if they damaged their business by telling people they couldn't listen to the radio without a license... Since it wouldn't be true of that station. ( Better still the PRS might start to include advertising in their notices... eg, Can't listen to stations, other than Radio-GPL )
A captive market and a litigious company doing them free PR work - It doesn't get much better than that...
I wonder how long the PRS would last before the artists realized they were the real enemy...
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
A bar owner in Japan was ordered to pay royalties for playing the harmonica for his customers. As far as I know, the decision has stuck.
http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2006/11/10/elderly-harmoni.html
All property rights are legal fictions enforced by governments.
Real property rights often have some justification even without the legal fiction, and they have reflections in social codes.
That taking a piece of property deprives someone of that property can be demonstrated even without any law. There's a strong social code against it, even beside the law. Borrowing on the other hand is much less clear-cut which is also reflected in social code, where refusing to lend something may be frowned upon, even while the ownership is clearly established.
In the case of land there's a wide variation of law; many countries do not have any restriction against crossing someone's land, and more countries seem to be moving towards roaming rights. In some countries you're free to pick all the berries and mushrooms you want on private land; if they want it, they should indicate it through fencing or signs (which is a demonstrable economic gain; unused resources get utilized at no loss to anyone else). Again, a reflection of demonstrable natural situations valid even without the presence of law.
Intellectual 'property' on the other hand, has no such natural expression. Without the actual law there is no demonstrable harm. In fact, the law itself contradicts natural social rules as it prevents maximization of both freedom and experienced wealth, causing demonstrable harm to everyone who is prevented to perform, copy or display things that would cause nobody else harm.
Ultimately intellectual 'property' laws are counter productive and damaging to the economy. Without being founded in social codes they have no real justification and ignoring them is never 'wrong', it may even be a moral duty, even if it may be 'illegal'.
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!
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.
Right now, one of the political parties in my country has taken the position that we can spend literally trillions of dollars on wars on multiple fronts, tens of billions more on a war against drugs, more on keeping a tremendous fraction of its population in prison, AND THAT DOING THIS WHILE REDUCING THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT TO A TRIVIAL FRACTION IS POSSIBLE.
The other major party just might be addressing these problems a little, and they generally don't advocate actually reducing the government to a tiny fraction of what's needed, but they agree with the first party that they can keep up these programs WHILE EVENTUALLY AVOIDING ANY MORE DEFICIT SPENDING.
Neither is a sane, healthy position, even though one is obviously a full blown delusional psychosis and the other might marginally qualify as just a case of being neurotic enough to only function at a modest percentage of potential, if things stay routine and the stress doesn't get too bad.
It's called cognitive dissonance. A news channel simultaneously says they're the most popular source in the world, AND their viewers are a small, persecuted minority. Businesses say they want free markets but need special government protections for their business models.
That's why I dislike it when people say "in the real world" about these things. If that much of the real world really believes such self contradictory ideas, that doesn't somehow magically make them sustainable. It just means 'the real world' is headed for chaos.
Who is John Cabal?
I am a musician. I have had placed I play threatened with legal action because the club hadn't paid ASCAP & BMI to allow them a performing license to allow me to play original music in that venue. And despite me not being represented by BMI I have the "right" to opt in at a later time so they are "entitled" to collect money until I decide to do so. You can opt out of Sound Exchange but BMI and ASCAP are organizations that act on our behalf whether or not we would like.
The whole situation where all musicians are assumed to opt in and then must jump through hoops to get payments is a joke. As a small musician I am not showing up on the radio charts and since I have been in a dozen bands it would be a pain to collect checks for under a dollar for each group. It is not like the clubs report that I am playing there and that the set is all originals and that the BMI should not collect any fees from them that day. So the associations collect their fees and then figure that some major artist was being played because they base their calculations off of radio play.
It is also annoying as it makes it impossible to may a truly free college or internet radio station. Even if I only played my own tunes I would have to pay a fee to do so and then register to get it back minus administrative overhead.
This is so true. I'm also a musician who enjoys writing and performing my own material. I have no real desire to become huge, I just enjoy what I do and hope that I give enjoyment to others. The problem is that the venues for me to play at my level are becoming fewer and fewer. The PRS effectively insists that all venues pay to join their organisation any live music is performed there. I know they deny this on their site, and that technically it is possible for venues to allow music by non-PRS members, but the guilty until proved innocent model makes it almost impossible for them to opt-out of the system.
The way they work is that if a pub puts on bands and the pub is not a member of the PRS, they have to prove that no cover versions of PRS artists were played. This means that a pub owner effectively has to know every song ever registered with a publishing company in order to police this and legally opt out of the system. They can, and will, be asked to provide set-lists in their defence. So what do they do, they stop putting on live music as its too much hassle. What's even worse is that say a band covers one of my songs, then the PRS will collect royalties on my behalf whether I want them to or not. You cannot opt out as a musician either (so those of you who blame greedy musicians for this situation as well, please think again)
Not only are the record companies killing recorded music, the PRS and their ilk are killing live music.
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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