The steady pace of anti consumer legislation passed by corrupt politicians has started to hit home recently in the UK.
http://torrentfreak.com/uk-copyright-cops-target-kids-schools-community-centers-081015/The Performing Rights Society, the UK outfit collecting royalties for the music industry, seems it will stop at nothing as it demands money from small businesses, charities, playschools, and now, kids’ community centers, all so that they can listen to music without fear of prosecution.
The UK’s Performing Rights Society (PRS) is a non-profit organization, setup to ensure that the music industry continues to make plenty more profits on an on-going regular basis. For years now, they have collected license fees from companies that use music as part of their businesses, such as pubs, clubs and restaurants. Some might argue that these type of companies benefit commercially from playing music to the public, so a license fee, although not particular popular, can be absorbed as a legitimate business expense.
However, recently the PRS has been getting more and more aggressive in its quest to funnel cash to its paymasters. It now sees every UK organization - commercial or otherwise - as a legitimate target to intimidate with threats of legal action, should they dare to play a radio, TV or DVD within earshot of the public without a license. Small businesses playing the radio for personal entertainment to pass the working day, charities, tea rooms, corner shops and even community centers are being targeted by this outfit. Bizarrely, they are currently going after the British police, who have been refusing to pay. It’s clear, they care about just one thing - money.
Torrentfreak have opened the can of worms with this particular issue, for years politicians have accepted glib words from the Copyright mafia that they wont abuse any new rights given to them but that such rights would only be used to shore up specific loop-holes in the law, now let us look at the widespread abuse we are seeing with children's nurseries and other places where ppl may congregate being told they must pay hundreds of pounds per years to listen to the radio in case music is heard aloud, and not content with that another organisation representing the movie industry is now bullying nurseries in case toddlers watch a dvd, for yet more hundreds of pounds, is this sheer greed the state of the fair deal the consumer expects their elected representative to maintain ?
I hope not.
My only joy in all of this is that by ensuring no one can hear or watch the corporate anti consumer trash produced by theses leeches jo public will move on to listening to independent artists and purchase music from musicians and singers who want to be heard and enjoyed and the money is merely the cream on the cake.
