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SABAM Wants Truckers To Pay For Listening To Radio

Posted by Soulskill on from the tell-us-of-your-plight dept.

guruevi writes "SABAM, the Belgian RIAA, wants truckers to start paying for the copyrights to listen to the radio in their cabin (Google translation of Dutch original). SABAM already has a system in place to extract fees from businesses for having radios in the work area for businesses with more than 9 employees, and they find that truckers' cabins are areas of work and thus infringe on their copyrights. The local politicians think this is going too far; they believe truckers need a radio for safety reasons and view a truck cabin as 'an intimate place.'"

5 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. I'd be fine with this, as long as... by NeuralAbyss · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd be fine with this, as long as the beancounters are forced to personally visit every single trucker in person, and attempt to extract their fees.

    I'd imagine they'd soon have a 'close encounter of the truckstop kind'... perfect sort of punishment for this level of arrogance. Next they'll be demanding fees for listening to the radio while driving to work. The publishing industry will stop at nothing to fraudulently demand fees for others' works.

    1. Re:I'd be fine with this, as long as... by jhoegl · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I find this interesting.
      It used to be that these companies kissed the ass of Radio stations. Who knows, they still might.
      They gave away the songs, tickets to concerts, everything to the radio stations to play the music during prime time to get their songs out there.
      Now, they are wanting the consumer, the very person that will like or dislike their artists work to pay to even listen to it for the first time?
      Complete 180 by the industry.
      Here is what I propose... play garage band songs, and songs by people who dont want to nickle and dime the consumer to death
      Fuck you big industry and suck my balls.

  2. Re:Money by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And why pick on truckies (not a group, actually, I'd choose to pick on, but there you go)? Why not - well, anyone?

    Because that's step 5 of their plan.
    Step 2 will be taxi's and public transport.
    Step 3 includes ALL business cars during business hours.
    Step 4 is to tax all vehicles used to commute to work.
    Step 5 is just to tax every vehicle.
    It takes some time for each of these steps to go from "completely unreasonable" to "just a bit les reasonable than the previous law".

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  3. Re:Radio by Dutchmaan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It used to be that music/tv shows were there as an enticement for a viewer to be exposed to the ads..NOW, the viewer/listener is considered 'stealing' the shows, if they don't listen to / watch the ads.

    It's a subtle but disgusting difference.

  4. Re:Simple response by deniable · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Then see how fast big content gets on board with net neutrality.