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SABAM Wants Truckers To Pay For Listening To Radio
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.'"
The first quote is "Kink ready nonsense." Hmmm...perhaps I need to machine translate more stories.
I was led to this place, a place I can't understand. A place that demands my belief just as strongly as my disbelie
n/t
So you can drive a car and do whatever you want but as soon as your hauling 12 hours a day and have to do all day there a niche to gouge money?
It's like the mind going AWOL, it's there somewhere
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.
Perhaps they have forgotten the reasons why music is broadcast over the radio for free in the first place?
1. Advertising revenue
2. Free promotion of new music
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
They have either paid for the music on CD, or the radio stations have already paid their dues.
What's next, people who whistle getting charged for public performances?
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
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
how nice for them
Who did they throw money at in order to get such a nonsensical perk?
And what if you don't listen to music but talk back radio instead?
How are they going to tell the difference?
You have to pay a fee for every radio in a business car.
Assuming Belgium radio royalties for broadcast music works on a similar basis to elsewhere (and I believe it does) then the radio station has already paid a royalty for broadcast. Claiming a second royalty seems extremely dubious.
The radio station broadcasting it already paid the royalties for a license to broadcast it.
Double dipping hogwash.
We always come back to the same thing - money. Radio stations make money - like Google, like free-to-air television - with adverts. Therefore they want to get the maximum exposure to their transmissions possible. It is in their interests to achieve that by including a decent DJ, reasonable news, maybe some talkback - oh, and music. It is, surely, the radio station's responsibility to do that legally.
Let's use a car analogy ... ok, truck analogy.
I buy a truck from Ford. Off I go, driving about. Sometimes at night.
I don't expect the manufacturer of the headlights to come along and say "Hey, you are using my lights a lot, you have to pay me extra money".
So why the heck should it happen here?
And why pick on truckies (not a group, actually, I'd choose to pick on, but there you go)? Why not - well, anyone?
"Cats like plain crisps"
I just couldn't get the image of some suit having to say "SABAM!" in order to turn into a super-copyright-dues-collector in red tights with a yellow lightning bolt.
Oooops, I guess now I have to go pay DC Comics their pound of flesh.... will it never stop?
Im a middle aged senior management IT guy and last year I realised I had not heard a new song on the radio in two (2) years even though I listen to 9 hours of radio a week. You see I listen to podacasts as my free time is split up all over the place so normal radio programming does not meet my needs as I would miss half the program when I get called away. But at the same time I have heard lots of adverts in the last year. If I was a musician I would be worrying because there is a medium to high income group of professionals now who thanks to the stupidity of the record labels "never ever can hear their music". So my money stays in my pocket and mu CD collection of years gone past gets taken out and played every now and again, pretty dumb in my view and a really stupid way to promote a product that needs to be heard before it can be sold.
KODA, the Danish equivalent of RIAA, had a case in Højesteret (Danish High Court) in 2003 that basically said that when you're at work, the broadcast licence rules for companies is in effect, even if you're a single trucker in a truck.
Only a few articles in Danish media covered it then. Here's the official statement from KODA at the time and a Google translation here
(weird links in preview -- wonder how they'll look when I press submit...)
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
To the sound of a business model in death throes. One day we will hear the death rattle, the conciliatory tones of the record industry industry executives saying they were too aggressive, should of adapted sooner and that they are changing the way they do business so it's of benefit to the consumer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I await the day that I'll be billed for waking up with a song stuck in my head. After all, if I can murmur more than a verse in the shower, I'm robbing the labels and mocking them with my nudity. God I suck.
dull-eyed footstool-temporary octopus
If I was representing the truckers, I'd say "Sure, no problem, we just won't transport any loads carrying your goods anymore."
See how quickly they decide a few dollars in licensing revenue is not worth losing all retail sales.
That's a loot of hookers!
ASSCAP, Asscrap, Monday (NNN) — After its recent successes suing girl scouts over singing copyrighted songs around campfires, the American Super-Society of Composers, Authors and Performers has filed a brief in a lawsuit against AT&T arguing that its members deserve payment every time a mobile phone rings.
The owners of the musical compositions are already paid for each ringtone download, but this does not cover ASCAP public performance royalties.
"The musicians and songwriters are the true creators of objective value in society," said ASCAP spokesdroid Ayn Rand. "They deserve your support. How would civilisation survive without Crazy Frog or the Nokia Tune? Which changes one note from the 1902 'Gran Vals' by Francisco Tárrega, so is completely original and deserving of royalties.
"To this end, we are bringing suits against those individuals who, having purchased RIAA-licensed ringtones, do not then silence them when in public. Statutory damages of $80,000 should have a salutary effect on our coffers and, of course, our public image."
Further lawsuits will then be brought against those who silence their mobile phones. "4'33' by John Cage is a copyrighted work. Without the money going to his estate, he may never write another measured piece of silence again." This will be followed by suits against those whistling or humming music in public, then those thinking about music in any form without a licence.
In support of their position, ASCAP pointed to vast public outpourings of sympathy from millions of people who never wanted to hear a tinny thirty-second burst of cheesy synthetic R&B coming from a phone ever again in their lives.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I'm sorry, if you don't want anyone to listen to your music, don't broadcast it.
This is like people who post shit on the web and get butthurt when people link to it. If you don't want people having whatever it is you're serving, don't put a computer on the web that doles it out in response to a HTTP GET request.
If you don't want people listening to your music, don't broadcast it as an unencrypted FM signal. You should not be able to broadcast something in the clear and then put conditions on who can tune in.
As the product requires less and less physical storage (IE: CD, DVD and etc.), We will see the Music and Movie industries attempting to charge us by the byte and not for the media that carries it. I can see why they are going after anyone who shares their product over the Internet as it's a medium and not their Intellectual Property.
Want to listen to the radio? That will be $xx.xx per minute. Your radio will report how long you've been listening and where you've been listening and what you've been listening to. How will you know what station to listen to? By each station allowing you to listen to them for a few minutes and "tease" you into listening to them for a fee.
The Internet is bringing on big changes in the way that we amuse ourselves. If we can put all of our entertainment choices on a mobile removable media device after directly downloading it from the net, how will the entertainment companies be able to charge us multiple times for it?
This is the endgame of all endgames. The entertainment industry has seen the future as far back as the introduction of MP3. You no longer have to go into a brick and mortar building to purchase a physical medium that holds their product while they hold the "copyright" to the product itself.
I can't wait for the proliferation of microphones in public places to catch you whistling a popular tune and charge you a royalty fee for it. ;-)
They were caught on TV a few weeks ago, a TV program asked for a price to play some music in some kind of event and they sent a list with the bands. SABAM sent them the pricing back. So far so good excepting for the fact that they were charging royalties for the bands "Kenwood" and "Kimberly Clark".
Thanks for clearing that much up. But I, and I am sure lots of other slashdotters, am still unclear on one detail.
What is a female?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"hopeful this will prompt government to wonder if the rules as they are currently implemented actually make sense."
One party in the Belgian government sees nothing wrong with letting the government fall if they don't get to waste the money that others make. In other words, most of the time the Belgians don't even HAVE a government, so I doubt it.
I suspect that SABAM management may find it difficult to get into their offices one day as all access routes may get blocked by either lorries or just their load. I cannot see truckers take it that SABAM is trying to blackmail them - driving a lorry isn't that profitable to start with. I cannot see this solve itself any other way..
Insert
They are the worst administration in our country... I have experienced people around me saying the worst things about the SABAM and its dumb rules on countless occasions. They are the bureaucratic death of the true love for music. Worst thing is, more often than rarely, they don't even pay the artists, or they ask fees for non-existing/unregistered artists!
This flemish [BE] TV crew exposed them some time ago... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZAsa9QmQO8/p
At least in the US, radio stations have to pay to play (perform) music to an audience. I suspect that is pretty much the same everywhere. That "performance for an audience" has already been paid for. How can they justify also charging the audience as well?
Nice to see that it's not just the RIAA that's batshit crazy.
Why aren't they targeting taxis? The whole thing is stupidity in motion. The end result will be that the companies pull the radios out of the trucks and the drivers supply their own, either portable or clipped into the dash.
First, they came for the truckers. If successful, they'll be tempted to go for the tractors and cranes, and then the taxis, and then the company cars. So where is the logical ending? Private cars used for business trips? Or just any vehicle where the music is audible a few meters from the vehicle?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This is double taxation sort of. Most people pay fees for listening to music at home and then more fees need to be paid in order to listen to the same stuff somewhere else.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Anyway, 10m is the 28MHz amateur radio band (10m being the wavelength). Ham gear is more powerful, and can drive larger linear amplifiers (the 'kicker' in CB parlance). A 1600W linear is going to need around 100W of drive, so the ham radio would work nicely. I think the legal limit of a CB is something like 10W, which would underdrive the linear.
The US obsession with RF power never ceases to amaze me, especially when I'm using 5W to talk to an operator running 1500W. The QRP mantra: power is no substitute for skill.
As you say, I can't believe I am biting at the troll ...
I genuinely hate these people as much as Sony... Some of the taxes they ask: 1. Tax on a blank cd/dvd (you might use it to pirate music) 2. Tax on a DVD/CD-Burner (you might use it to pirate music) 3. Tax on music you buy (you might pirate it) 4. Extra tax if you buy the music online (you might pirate it more easely) 5. Tax on HDD/USB/Media players (you could store some of their music on it) 6. Tax on listening to the radio at work 7. Tax when you give a party and play music 8. Tax when you are a DJ and use the music at a party When is the last time you had to go to jail because you bought a screwdriver? (You could kill someone with it, you know...) Crazy BS...
Producers of music simply want to charge as much as they can get away with. Consumers of music of course want everything for free. In particular the concepts of "fairness" or "reasonableness" have no practical meaning with respect to the desires of the parties.
What we see here is how this particular representative of music producers has discovered a (yet untapped) potential source of revenues. So they make demands (based on their interpretation of the rules under which both they and their consumers operate: laws) and forward proposals.
If no-one complains, then their proposals were apparently fair, reasonable, and justified and will be accepted by default. If people do complain, it depends on the strength and the support of the protest. If protests are isolated and feeble, they can be ignored. If they are widespread and intense, producers may decide to ask for less, drop the demand altogether. If protests are widespread but seem to be manageable, the issue may head for arbitration (e.g. a court of law) and then it may be enforced despite protests.
The final outcome is a price which music producers feel they cannot increase without loosing net revenue (e.g. by losing customers or by spending too much on enforcement). In other words: the market price.
This once again shows the need for vigilant monitoring of one's interests in society.
It won't work. These useless rentseekers even see no contradiction in charging you for songs you have written and recorded yourself.
It was stupid in the 1980s when they started charging radio stations and it's become progressively more stupid since but they see nothing wrong. They just see marks to milk without giving them anything they don't already have.
"Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day." (/clarkson)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
First off, yes, I know, it's not their job to make sense, just to find new ways to get paid several times for the same crap.
Anyway. If the station pays for the music, and lets ANYONE listen to it, where you are shouldn't matter. Heck, maybe hairdressers should just let you borrow a radio and a pair of plugs and not play anything through speakers. Might cost a bit in plugs now and then since they'll probably cut a cord or two, but hey, most likely cheaper, right? ;)
Only way I'll ever pay for listening to radio is if they give me bacon as well. Mmm, bacon.
Transport companies pull out all the FM radios from their trucks
drivers are told to find their own entertainment
truckers listen to their own Ipods or MP3 players or CD players
advertisers stop advertising on radio
radio stations go broke
Record companies lose even more money
Do you know why truckers keep a dog as a traveling companion?
Because a sheep would be too obvious.
I listen to music while I work all the time. You're never going to get a cent out of me for it.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Isn't broadcast radio already paid for by advertising? I thought the process went like this: Advertisers pay radio station, who uses a portion of said revenue to pay for licenses to broadcast songs. Beyond that, I fail to see how it should matter how or where anyone within broadcast range tunes in. The local recording industry already has their money. If they want more, maybe they should renegotiate with the radio stations or pull their licenses and start their own radio stations, cutting out the middleman.
Beyond that, I believe they can very well fuck off. How the hell are they going to enforce this, stick a microphone in every truck cab to hear what the driver's listening to?
Shouldn't there be a law that prohibits someone to be taxed two times over the same... stuff?
what happens when a radio gets turned on/off in a room full of say, 50 people?
Cost increase to radio station: $0.00
Added listeners to commercials: 50
(translates to being able to ask more $$ from the advertisers for each spot)
Besides greed/doubledipping, there's absolutely no reason to charge for that. You're already getting more listeners which translates directly into additional ad revenue.
This is just the most popular Money Grab excuse out there "they have more money than our average customer, so we want to charge them more." (and without providing additional value)
Bogus. Totally bogus.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Worst is that we don't even HAVE a government that we can overthrow, like e.g. Egypt.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Go with the market or the market will work against you
A blog I run for the wealth
Large radio stations currently have to pay 2.968% of gross income up to 1.46 euro per head of the population in their broadcast area. Income over that is "taxed" at 1.59%. That tariff includes only FM radio. Anything else, e.g. online streaming, is extra. The rules for small radio stations are somewhat more complicated -- available in Dutch here: http://www.sabam.be/website/data/tariffs/Tarief_webradio.pdf
are sports bars going to have to pay to show games from professional leagues now?
...
Small diesels are now popular in Australia (despite being raped by the oil companies and paying more per litre than petrol -- the opposite of most countries). The VW Golf 118TSI Comfortline is a 1.4l 'twincharge' petrol with 118kW and 240Nm and the Golf GTD is a 2.0l turbo diesel with 125kW and 350Nm, so these are roughly equivalent in performance. With a DSG gearbox the 118TSI has emissions of 144g/km of CO2 and the GTD has emissions of 152g/km of CO2 -- but there is no mention of CO.
With the use of low sulphur diesel and good particulate filters there is no valid reason to ban the use of 'oil burners' in passenger cars. In someways these are better for biofuel as waste oils from the food industry can be converted to biodiesel, whereas ethanol for addition to petrol consumes a lot of valuable growing land. The appeal of biodiesel in heavily taxed countries is the, erm, 'lack' of excise.
If the truckers just decide they don't need the record company's money enough to transport the albums, I can see a sharp decline in album sales. Or DVD's for that matter, or Blueray. There can't be that much money in media transport. Maybe a specific strike against the music industry would give them some perspective.
In America you pay income tax, and if you buy something, then you can pay property tax, but you have to eat, so you go buy food and they tax you for that. If you try and operate a business, it gets worse still. Anyway by the time they income tax you, property tax you, sales tax you, communications tax you.. How many times is that?
No-smoking-in-the-workplace laws to trucks too. Truckers have been fined for smoking on the job in an enclosed workspace, i.e. their truck. I kid you not
http://www.driving.ca/Truckers+furious+after+driver+fined+smoking/2081408/story.html
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user