DJs Breaking Music Copyright Law

[The Heat]

DJs Breaking Music Copyright Law

Licence To Play Please

The Beeb is reporting many DJs are violating a whole heap of copyright laws - gasp - by playing unlicensed digital music tracks from laptops and MP3 players only MONTHS after the new permit scheme began.

I know, it's shocking. In the old days you would pay for a track, play it, keep it and keep playing it until the vinyl grooves were scratched off the record.

But with all the new fangled digital music, gubbins royalty collection agency PPL set up a way to squeeze more money out of skint DJs who probably only make a few hundred with each gig.

Annual licences cost £200 plus VAT. This allows the DJ to play the music from laptops and MP3 players.

Peter Leathem from PPL told Radio 1's Newsbeat: "Rather than saying stop it, don't do it, we've actually tried to embrace what people want to do and come up with a licence to be able to do that."

As Lee Jarvis, from Essex, says: "It's a bit of a sting I think. For someone who's not a mega-superstar DJ a few hundred quid can really make a difference."

(Taken from anthems.com)

[deejay]

Why should the average small time DJ have to pay a licence fee to play music from their laptop/mp3 player??.......Just a way to put easy funds into the pockets of those 'TOFFEE NOSE' executives at the music authorities.

[Mike]

Its farcical the DJ has (presumably) already paid for the CD's -gone to the trouble of ripping them onto his/her laptop and is supposed to pay for doing that as well ON TOP OF the royalties that the venue he/she is playing is (presumably) paying to PRS/IMRO (or whatever theyre called these days :rolleyes: )

I thought the Irish copyright laws were updated (in 2001 ???) to allow for "fair use" such as timeshifting/spaceshifting ??????

Do radio stations up and down the country pay everytime they put a record/cd onto tape/minidisc for internal use ?

[Liamo]

I'd agree 100%, Mike, but the copyright on the CDs that you buy does cover the record companies' asses.....NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE is there in capitals.

Anyway, bearing in mind that the above is a UK story, what is the exact legal position in Ireland ? As per Mike's post, I've always been under the impression that the venue is responsible.....is this still the case, or have they implemented something similar here ?