UK Court Shoots Down Fee Hike For Pubs, Restaurants & Hotels

from the give-the-money-back dept

Over the last few years, we've seen collections societies around the world do whatever possible to bring in more money -- most often by either trying to hike up their fees and by trying to collect from more places/venues -- even when those claims are often quite a stretch. Luis Esteves alerts us to the news that, over in the UK, one of the local collections societies, PPL, has lost a lawsuit concerning its fee hike back in 2005 -- meaning that pubs, restaurants and hotels that play music in the UK may be getting somewhere around £20m in revenue back from PPL. While this is one small victory against the rapid expansion of these groups, it's still worth noting that these groups, often with the backing of the government, are almost always rent seeking -- looking for more ways to get money out of organizations and individuals.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: collection society, copyright, hotsl, pubs, restaurants, uk
Companies: ppl


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2010 @ 4:15am

    Some good news are welcome every once in a while.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    ethorad (profile), 17 Feb 2010 @ 4:40am

    how will PPL pay?

    I'm wondering how PPL will pay the £20m. After all, it's not like they have many assets since they'll have been distributing it all to artists over the years.

    Right?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Call me Al, 17 Feb 2010 @ 4:58am

    Re: how will PPL pay?

    hehe very true.

    Chances are they can pay it out of the small change they find lying around their offices... that being the money for the non-major artists that they are waiting to distribute to the artists.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2010 @ 5:03am

    Re: Re: how will PPL pay?

    Utter nonsense! Collection societies are the BEST thing that ever happened to artists, and to music in general.

    (/s)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    Ima Fish (profile), 17 Feb 2010 @ 5:29am

    "...are almost always rent seeking..."

    When you seek payment via force and coercion the technical term is extortion.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    Killer_Tofu (profile), 17 Feb 2010 @ 5:35am

    Re:

    My bubbles.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Crazy Old Man, 17 Feb 2010 @ 5:59am

    Crazy IDea...

    If I were a pub or restaraunt, I'd approach local bands and tell them that I will play their music for free.

    If the don't want to play ball, there are other local bands that will.

    Heck, I'll even offer to sell their CDs too.

    Free advertising for them, free music for me.

    Screw RIAA and it's illegitimate spawn!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Rasmus, 17 Feb 2010 @ 6:16am

    Re: Re: Re: how will PPL pay?

    Collections societies would be illegal if it wasn't for a very dubious exception to laws against anti-competitive practices created by the Bern convention.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    Hephaestus (profile), 17 Feb 2010 @ 6:55am

    Re: Crazy IDea...

    Actually this is already happening in Australia. Where bar and club owners are getting together and finding CC and free music. If this were to happen around the world the labels would probably try to get laws passed to stop it. They were extremely fearful of a single 100 watt high school radio station boycotting artists supporting the Performance Rights tax. The station stopped playing music of these artists for a month.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2010 @ 7:52am

    "it's still worth noting that these groups, often with the backing of the government, are almost always rent seeking -- looking for more ways to get money out of organizations and individuals."

    they're lazy failures that go around extorting hard workers for no good reason and the government backs them only because they're also lazy failures and get paid campaign contributions by extortionist lazy failures.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Some Other Guy, 17 Feb 2010 @ 8:43am

    Re: Re: Re: how will PPL pay?

    Have you paid for the use of that sarcasm mark? :)

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.