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Mechanics declared pirates...of music

by Matthew Johnston • 15th October 2007 • 11 comments

The car repairing company Kwikfit is being sued by the music industry for breaching copyright, by letting its employees listen to the radio.

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Oh the crazy world of the music industry, it never ends. Today’s madness: the car tinkering company Kwikfit is being sued for breaching copyright, by letting its employees listen to the radio.

The legal proceedings were brought about by the Performing Rights Society, which is the entity that looks after the royalties paid to songwriters and performing artists. According to them, mechanics in Kwik-Fit centres across the UK “routinely use personal radios”, and apparently this amounts to a public performance, for which some money needs to be handed over.

The sum total of the damages? £200,000.

Kwikfit have taken the “hands off” approach by saying that radios are banned from the workplace, but still attempted to have the case thrown out. Unfortunately, the judge decided it should go ahead, saying “The allegations are of a widespread and consistent picture emerging over many years whereby routine copyright infringement in the workplace was, or inferentially must have been, known to and 'authorised' or 'permitted' by local and central management.”

So what are we to take from this? Well apparently, if you’re in the UK at least, you aren’t allowed to let other people hear the music you’re listening to. Incredible isn’t it? Perhaps soon even just remembering music IN YOUR BRAIN will be enough to be breaking copyright.

Oh and next time you think about playing CDs loud enough for your neighbours to hear – think again.

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Comments

  • John_Mahon @ 15 Oct 2007 23:21

    That is un-be-leivable! This could be like an army deafness claim and open the floodgates to music companies sueing every single workplace that has a radio on, which is every office in the country mindlessly listening to some mindless banter and the same 3 songs on rotation on FM104 or some tripe like that

  • Tayor @ 16 Oct 2007 7:21

    we pay about e50k a year for playing music in pubs and clubs .....would love to know where that money goes

  • ianarchy @ 16 Oct 2007 8:38

    Jesus trev are you really? you must be the one of the single biggest contributors, are you paying that much for the bernard shaw?

  • Tayor @ 16 Oct 2007 8:59

    a combination of club nights and the BS

  • ianarchy @ 16 Oct 2007 9:23

    sounds peculiar because most venues have a license and therfore promoters dont have to pay the license, might be worth looking into

  • Ben Morgan @ 16 Oct 2007 9:31

    And I bet, Trev, that none of your DJs give you playlists for you to send to the copyright agency, so instead of royalties going to our favourite underground artists, they divide up the income based on radio play and sales in HMV.

  • ianarchy @ 16 Oct 2007 9:37

    could be an idea

  • Tayor @ 16 Oct 2007 12:38

    your right Ben hence my cynicism on the whole thing . In principle i agree with the idea , particularly for small labels and artists they need all the revenue streams they can get, so paying a 'performance fee' for music is fair enough . But by and large this money goes to the major labels and artists, of whose music we dont play . so for example does the 50k we pay each year go to labels like Freerange , Kitsune, Delsin,DFA or Raw Fusion . or does it go to EMI, Warner, Sony, and the other big 5 . I must look into all this and see what the story is , im not too knowlegeable about it all tbh

  • ianarchy @ 16 Oct 2007 12:42

    depends what organisation you are paying some collect specificaly for record labels and other for singer songwriters, if the people who's music is played at the gigs are members of royalty collecting agencies then when you submit your setlists they get paid simple as that

  • nj @ 23 Oct 2007 22:46

    some mates of mine used to go around all the shops and bars in brisbane and get them to put their band down and the music that was played. i guess the law might be a bit different there but i think the principle's the same.

  • Tayor @ 24 Oct 2007 8:07

    did they get paid at end of it ?

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