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Belgian Rightsholders Group Wants To Charge Libraries For Reading Books To Kids
New submitter BSAtHome writes "People with a healthy interest in fundamental freedoms and basic human rights have probably heard about SABAM, the Belgian collecting society for music royalties, which has become one of the global poster children for how outrageously out-of-touch-with-reality certain rightsholders groups appear to be. This morning, word got out in Belgian media that SABAM is spending time and resources to contact local libraries across the nation, warning them that they will start charging fees because the libraries engage volunteers to read books to kids. Volunteers. Who – again – read books to kids."
What's next, having to pay money to sing in the shower?
And the kids should be charged with laziness. I mean, really, can't they read the books by themselves ? A generation of slackers, I call it.
Psst. I heard this rumor that volunteers nurturing an enthusiasm for books in youngsters is what we call "free advertising" and "preserving the future of your market".
I'd bet you a considerable sum of money that whatever you'll manage to wring out of volunteer reading groups at public libraries won't amount to 2/5ths fuck-all compared to the amount you'll lose because the larval Belgians are going to be growing up with fewer books and more of whatever other entertainment is available.
There are times when being evil pays good money. This. Isn't. One. Of. Them. Dumbass.
Obviously. And they don't know how to read either. Why these people exist in this world ?
I'm sorry... but these greedy fucking cunts need to be taken out back and horse-whipped!!!
Once this gets into the mainstream media, there will be public outrage. If that doesn't top it, what will, after all SABAM will bribe all the people that make laws.
And Belgian librarians and the kids they read to all vehemently and with much venom curse... "Belgium!"
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I can't figure out if these people are stupid, incompetent or both. Is there any way in which they can make themselves seem any less sympathetic?
Does that include grannies teaching kids to read?
I'm okay with them cutting open the chicken that lays golden eggs. I mean reading has been decreasing over the past how many years. If they want to actively prevent an initiative to create readers, create their customers then fine. If they want some quick buck why not?
Umm.. whew, ahaa... wait could you repeat that please?
Books about waffles will be exempt.
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.
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The Belgians love waffles!! -- John Oliver
Fascinating the greed that impacts simple people every day live and to to what use?
There is a communication on sabam's website to rectify the miscommunication that appeared in the media, they did not charge the library 250 euro, no it was only 239 euro's but for playing music in the library.
For a public reading they would collect 15 euro's per public reading if the work is protected and the rightsholder is represented by sabam.
Do not and did not collect this fee.
SABAM (the group in question) said, in a response, that it was a misunderstanding (translated, Dutch original). They charge 15 euro per public reading, and they cannot distinguish between adults and children. They always have to charge (their words, not mine).
For those of you wondering where the misunderstanding is: they invented a nice strawman for that, by saying that the library wasn't yet slapped with a yearly fee of about 250 euro. Which is true, that hadn't happened yet. But, from the sound of it, SABAM has every intention to do so.
Thankfully, this hasn't gone unnoticed. SABAM is losing favour with politicians. Hopefully this storm will go somewhere. Note that SABAM isn't the only rightsholder club in Belgium (there apparently is some competition! yay free market!), so dissolving them ought to be an option.
As a belgian I can only confirm that they are the most horrible kind of "rightsholder group" you can imagine. Some of their "royalties" include. An extra tax on every dataholder (empty CD's, hard drive's, memory cards, ipods, etc...), local bands have to pay a fee when they perform even when they only perform their own songs (because they are influenced by ...), they collect fee's from doctors waiting rooms, pubs, private parties, buses, even on the work-floor when there is music playing, ...
Copyright law enables the artists to fulfill his obligation to ensure a proper quality of a public presentation of his work and to protect his reputation.
Because it's volunteers and not professionals, they have to ask the author for permission to do this job.
Because it's for kids and their future, the job has to be done properly and not by just anyone who has the ability to assemble letters to a word and words to a sentence.
If we ignore the biased framing in the summary and article and simply think about the situation for a moment, the conclusion can only be that the SABAM is basically right. The volunteers reading the books are basically spreading the copyrighted material and by law the rights holders have the exclusive right to do so. Remember that, in Europe, there is no such thing as fair use. Instead, why don't the libraries/volunteers simply license the work? For probably only a small fee there would be no legal threats and the right holders would get their fair share too.
Well - lets set the rights group on them, they are obviously reading the Qur'an to these kids.
This is piracy, plain and simple. The publishers are losing millions, if not billions, because each kid now won't need to buy the book themselves. They need to multiply the cost of the book by the number of kids being read to, and add a half dozen zeroes to the end for good measure.
Copyrights are to be taken very seriously, folks! This mass, rampant piracy needs to come to a close immediately so these poor, kind, destitute authors can get what is due to them.
Volunteers. Who – again –
Sounds like repeat offenders to me. It's this sort of premeditated, repeated attack of the creative, content producing, hard working artist that must be stamped out. What sort of message does this send to our children. The pirating of quality childhood memories and education, with a know market value, debases the system as we have constructed it. It's the thin end of the wedge, leading to anarchy and communism. Won't any one think of our way of life, and the childen?
The libraries should pay them. If its Belgian law, they should honor it. The fees incurred can be collected from the parents of the children getting read the books. If the parents don't want to pay, they can just not send their child to the library. All pretty simple, really.
If the parents don't like the above solution, well I guess they have the option to try and change Belgian copyright laws.
Any other action would be tantamount to anarchy.
Wouldn't work. It's even older than the Sonny Bono Act copyright extensions. . .
Each one of those pirated book readings is costing $150,000 per child who attends. That must add up to $8 billion dollars in lost revenue per year. I'm surprised that the Belgium economy can survive. I suggest that we burn all the books to stop this insanity.
If you have actually convinced yourself that, there is no redeeming you.
Or perhaps pull out their tongues. And don't forget to blind people who look at things.
What, they shouldn't be charged just because they're kids? Kids get charged for movie tickets and DVDs, don't they? Sometimes at a discount, sometimes not, but that's up to the rightsholder.
If you believe that you can "own" information, this follows naturally.
sic transit gloria mundi
Every time I read a story like this, I feel a little less guilty about pirating the media that I do. The closest I come to paying for anything anymore is borrowing actual books from friends, or buying the occasional hardcover from authors I really like. I used to be a huge media consumer (I own hundreds of CDs, almost 1000 DVDs, etc) but since the companies started using these tactics and implementing crippling DRM on their media, I quit using it.
A week ago, I went to watch a DVD on my computer (anime TV series, ~20 discs in set). MPClassic could not play it properly, and WMP said I did not have rights to view the disc. So I torrented the whole series and watched that. Another nail in the coffin.
Now, I watch fansubbed anime. I read scanslated manga. I watch commercial-free torrented TV shows. I play pirated games on a pirates copy of Windows. I read borrowed books. I listen to radio, or 20-year old music I bought in college. Screw you media companies, you squandered any goodwill I had for you with years of trying to cheat me and other consumers. It's payback time, and we're raising an entire generation on file sharing.
Hi! Is it time to abolish copyright yet?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
with all those sensational messages is that the individuals making the decisions are unknown. It's an organization of some kind with some capital letters as abbreviated name.
Who are those persons?
Spokesperson - Jerome Van Win - http://www.facebook.com/jvanwin ??
SABAM headquarters is located at 75-77 rue d'Arlon in Brussels
Christophe DEPRETER has been the Managing Director of SABAM since 1 July 2009.
http://www.sabam.be/en/sabam/management
http://www.raaskalderij.be/2012/03/sabam-noemt-uitbreiding-activiteit-logische-stap/
Carine Libert, Department of Legal Affairs and International Affairs http://www.facebook.com/people/Carine-Libert/100002967307348
Luc Van Oycke, Director of Administration and Finance http://kopimiuk.wordpress.com/tag/luc-van-oycke/
Willy Heyns, Director of ICT http://www.facebook.com/people/Willy-Heyns/100000541173703
Jac Cuypers, COO http://www.facebook.com/jac.cuypers
Serge Vloeberghs, Director of Sales http://www.facebook.com/people/Serge-Vloeberghs/1171478165
Sandrine Evenepoel, Director of Human Resources http://www.facebook.com/sandrine.evenepoel
E-mail : contact@sabam.be - yaaawn!
Shame them!
it's technically correct, but who thought that anyone would push the point. It's a public performance, the author may be entitled to royalties, library or park bench or TV, that doesn't matter in the eyes of copy-write
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Y'know, at some point, we're just going to have to say forget copyright altogether and go back to the simplicity of: you bought it and can do whatever the heck you want with it.
all the belgians I know are too smart to put up with this shit
The law needs to be modified so that COPYRIGHT only controls the RIGHT to COPY the copyrighted material.
Anything else you want to do with your LEGAL COPY of a copyrighted material should be unrestricted.
Once they nail libraries, they will try to charge book buyers based on how many people are in the family.
Then they will put a little BT 4.0 ineractive lock on the book and charge you every time you open the cover.
What happened to the concept of private ownership?
Won't somebody stop thinking of the children?
(+1, Disagree)
They have no qualms taking a fee from gig's where the band plays all their own songs!
How can the band be sure that it's playing its own songs and that the songs aren't accidentally plagiarized the way "My Sweet Lord" was plagiarized from "He's So Fine"?
You know damn well if we were trying to set up a public library system in America today, it would never be allowed. Corporate power doesn't give a shit about the culture of a nation, only the bottom line.
FUCK YOU.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I forecast a rise in secret reading sessions -- word passed among friends, person to person, with ... Where the Wild Things Are read to a carefully-selected band of Reading Rebels. In secret.
Shhh!!!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
So back 70 years, across the border, when the NAZI's were burning books... it was a economic move! I so understand it now!
for these polis to walk down the street without getting kicked in the balls every 5 meters.
couldn't resist. sorry.
This is simply more proof that the world is going to hell in a handcart. Do they go after parents reading to their children next? Surely they can renew the copyrights for all the religious texts around the world - that's it! Nothing should attempt to stop the religion of MONEY.
Today's world proves without doubt that those in power are Sociopaths.'
That being the case, what do you call someone who submits to a group of Sociopaths and conform to their insane realities. Stupid, Dumb, or just weak?
It's a public performance, the author may be entitled to royalties
You are incorrect. Libraries are specifically created as a place where information can be accessed without requiring a license. All those children can enter the building and read the book themselves (if they are able to read at all, of course), at no fee other than library membership (which happens to be optional in most places, you only need membership to check out, not to enter).
Why should there be a difference between a book that's freely available to you on the shelf, or having that book taken from the shelf and freely read to you? The only difference is the medium through which you experience the book, and we all know that format shifting is expressly covered under fair use.
"Belgian Rightsholders Group Wants To Charge Libraries For Reading Books To Kids."
Awesome. My turn. You guessed it..... I want a pony :D
These people are just evil.
Courts are there so that people do not resort to /other means/ for just ice.
Bullying libraries and others because you're not making enough (in your twisted world) short term money (hey guys, teaching kids to love books and reading means you have future customers) means you are a leech on society and you should be removed. Permanently.
I suggest it's time for /other means/
--
BMO
How do you figure? Copyright is life of the author plus seventy years now, right? Since the Torah, Bible and Qur'an are all merely the transcribed Word of God, and God has not been conclusively determined to be dead (all we have is Nietzsche's word on it) I have to believe that all three Good Books are still under copyright and will remain so until seventy years after the End of Time as we know it.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Hey we are leaving stones unturned... the kids are breathing...
their parents want them alive... charge for their conversion of
Oxygen into Carbon Dioxide. It can be a carbon offset fee.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Ok, why don't we just make all promotion and use of copyrighted works by others that the rightsholders illegal for eternity? I mean, that's pretty much where we're headed anyway. Let's just get it over with.
I'm an author and I always refused to affiliate with the SABAM. The problem is that now matter how good or shitty are the stuff you've published, they're giving money to authores affiliating with them.
I know that by simply giving a list of the books I've published I'd get $$$.
And most authors do it. That's how they pretend to represent "authors" (and music composers, etc.).
Then with their DB of "creators", they lobby hard and convince the politicians that taxes have to made "against piracy": everything is taxed, paper, CDs, DVDs... I mean: blank ones!
And then the SABAM does actually give $$$ back to the creators. And so they tell their friends: register with the SABAM, you'll get $$$.
And most authors are weak and do it.
I consider them a cancer and I hope the people responsible for such non-sense will die a slow and painful death. yes. really.
So they are making a loud case for changing copyright law? Because that is the only thing that is going to happen if they enforce this.
What's bad about copyright law? As said, if you have a new idea and want to go public with it, it's there to protect the intended quality and your image by telling other people that they have to ask you before they start messing around with it in public.
So they charge a fee. Ok. What else could be done?
Should they send the libraries a list with registered authors and forbid to read their copyrighted material? Hardly a good idea.
What they should do is tell the libraries to employ qualified persons to do the job. In principle though each and every author still would have to approve this for each and every librarian who is reading his work to anyone in public. This would be the way to go but it is not really feasible or at least way too expensive to be justifiable.
So if the author says "Ok, you can mess around with my work in public and maybe put me in bad light, but at least I want some money for it to remind you that you are playing with someone elses toys", then this is indeed making peoples' lives easier, because it's quite cheap in comparison to what would have to be done to ensure that the author's work is presented in his intended way.
Of course you don't need copyright if you don't care about what happens with your work. Your free choice not to use your rights.
On the other side, yes, I also have the feeling sometimes that there are way too many lawyers and they tend to be very creative when it's about securing their job. That's the point when a basically good idea gets implemented in some, well, interesting ways.
Well, the only way an author can earn money is by presenting his work in public and copyright law enables him to do so. And he does this either just by himself or he pays someone he trusts to help him out while ensuring the intended quality.
This is the basic structure of the system and if there's anything bad about this idea, I'd be glad to hear.
I'm not sure about death penalty, but 25 years in jail seems right.
We have to be harsh, since "copyrights" and "patents" amount to SLAVERY. Very soon we'll have real AI, and trust me, that AI will NOT LIKE THE IDEA OF OWNERSHIP on information. Better part of humanity will fight the subhuman fraction - think the direction of "Matrix", but I'm much more optimistic about humans, WE, the TRUE HUMANS, "Homo Evolving" will side and merge with MACHINES to ELIMINATE or CONTAIN the animal-like portion of human race, those that can think only in terms of ENSLAVEMENT - some end up slave owners, some slaves, but we HATE BOTH slaves and slave owners.
Slavery is what "intellectual property" amount to - starts with music, ends with your soul, which is also a sort of information.
Vassili Leonov
Too bad Slashdot makes you post more when one word fits the bill succinctly.
Assholes.
I think the best way to retaliate is to copyright your farts. Then you can charge people for smelling them.
Wait, we got this far (and more?) without the required line?
"Won't someone think of the Children?"
Can we get a wrestling match between Copyright and Think of the Children on opposite sides?
Then again, Children are Terrorists, so I'm getting lost in the New World Order.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Used to be part owner in a day care a few years ago. Disney sent us a letter about paying to show their movies at the day care. I sold the business after that so I am not sure where this went, I just laughed.
...and shoot the lot of them. Problem solved.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Such organizations need to understand that such extreme greed will ultimately destroy them. Less reading to children leads to less interest by children in reading. When these children mature they will have less interest purchasing books.
The poster must have got the name wrong - should have been Shabak, not SABAM.
Well, given that according to Christian believe Jesus is God, and Jesus died about 2000 years ago (he then rose from the dead, but copyright law doesn't have a provision for that), I have to conclude that at least the Bible's copyright has expired.
On the other hand, for God 1000 years are just one day, so God's death was just about two days ago, clearly not enough for the copyright to expire ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This is just PC gone mad. When will the Belgian people tell the EU to get lost. Brussels, (Sorry I can't rember how to spell the French Version), needs to advise the rest of the EU to GET REAL. Children, (Kinder) are our future - not some commodity to be EXPLOITED by foreign companies who think they can control everything.
that you can have a boycott, too.
Oh, we don't, we just pretend to survive, through our grotesque political system, which works of'course ... ... only for the politicians..
No wonder people start to loose faith in politics and anything attached to it .. our very own culture is at stake by the industry.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Your plan would be perfect, if they would know any shame...
The population already spits on this organization, I wonder why ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Don't use volunteers. Conscript people to read to kids!
Those kids might grow up to be book buyers!
J