Apparently DJs in the UK need to pay £200 per year for the right to copy their own CDs onto a harddisk. This is on top of public performance licences.
It doesn’t matter where the CDs are from, either. The money is gathered by the PPL and fairly distributed to “the artists” using magical telepathy to calculate who gets what.
I intend to move into this growing business of nonsensical intellectual property extortion. I will collect £5.00 per year from every photographer with photos featuring buildings that are posted to sites like Flickr.
Architects designed those buildings, they worked hard, and they deserve the money! How dare people use their creations for free! I will of course distribute the money carefully, after taking a small amount for myself to cover administrative costs.
This is quite reasonable. “Rather than saying stop it, don’t do it, I’ve actually tried to embrace what people want to do and come up with a licence to be able to do that.”
All I need is a government to pass a law for me. Sadly this doesn’t come cheap. If you are an architect and want to get the ¬£1.00 per photo that is rightfully yours, please send me large sums of money to spend sending MPs on fact-finding tours, buying MPs lunch, and providing drugs to journalists.
Link: BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Digital DJs ‘unaware of copy law’
(I would never claim that the entertainment monopolies do such things, of course. Perish the thought)
