SABAM Wants Truckers To Pay For Listening To Radio

guruevi writes "SABAM, the Belgian RIAA, wants truckers to start paying for the copyrights to listen to the radio in their cabin (Google translation of Dutch original). SABAM already has a system in place to extract fees from businesses for having radios in the work area for businesses with more than 9 employees, and they find that truckers' cabins are areas of work and thus infringe on their copyrights. The local politicians think this is going too far; they believe truckers need a radio for safety reasons and view a truck cabin as 'an intimate place.'"

I haven't heard a new song in 2 years

[EEPROMS]

Im a middle aged senior management IT guy and last year I realised I had not heard a new song on the radio in two (2) years even though I listen to 9 hours of radio a week. You see I listen to podacasts as my free time is split up all over the place so normal radio programming does not meet my needs as I would miss half the program when I get called away. But at the same time I have heard lots of adverts in the last year. If I was a musician I would be worrying because there is a medium to high income group of professionals now who thanks to the stupidity of the record labels "never ever can hear their music". So my money stays in my pocket and mu CD collection of years gone past gets taken out and played every now and again, pretty dumb in my view and a really stupid way to promote a product that needs to be heard before it can be sold.

Simple response

[Desert Raven]

If I was representing the truckers, I'd say "Sure, no problem, we just won't transport any loads carrying your goods anymore."

See how quickly they decide a few dollars in licensing revenue is not worth losing all retail sales.

Re:Simple response

[airfoobar]

One also has to wonder why the ISPs haven't done that yet.

Re:I'd be fine with this, as long as...

[MachDelta]

Truck stops often offer a free shower in their facility with a minimum fuel purchase. Given that fuel prices are high and trucks have rather large fuel tanks, spending $250 on a fill up is not at all uncommon. Thus if you flip things around, it becomes 'free diesel' with the purchase of a '$250 shower'. Just a way of making it sound cute, especially when the facilities aren't exactly up to par.

And a lot lizard, for those still unsure, is just a prostitute that works a truck stop.

CB vs Ham

[dingram17]

I doubt that you'd be in front of most /. readers, since most have some science background and might recognise wavelengths etc.

Anyway, 10m is the 28MHz amateur radio band (10m being the wavelength). Ham gear is more powerful, and can drive larger linear amplifiers (the 'kicker' in CB parlance). A 1600W linear is going to need around 100W of drive, so the ham radio would work nicely. I think the legal limit of a CB is something like 10W, which would underdrive the linear.

The US obsession with RF power never ceases to amaze me, especially when I'm using 5W to talk to an operator running 1500W. The QRP mantra: power is no substitute for skill.

As you say, I can't believe I am biting at the troll ...

Re:I'd be fine with this, as long as...

[couchslug]

"The industry is dying."

Not fast enough. It needs to be shot in the face.

Re:I'd be fine with this, as long as...

[hitmark]

Indeed, comparing this to RIAA is missing the mark. This would be ASCAP in USA, iirc. Basically, the argument is that if a radio is being played in a bar then the bar benefits from said music (it replaced live entertainment after all). And so should share the profits with the artist(s) involved in making the music being played.

The basic mixup right now is that we have the actual creators (authors, artists) and the middle men distributors (publishers, record studios). Likely what your seeing is that the latter pushes for more stringent copyright in the same of the former, while shafting the former 6 ways to sunday.

Modern day copyright got its start for two reasons.

1. to maintain a lucrative monopoly that printers (the stationers guild) held in London thanks to a censure law passed under a previous monarch.

2. to provide authors a share in the profits from the sale of printed copies of their works.

the issue in Belgium is about point 2, largely thanks to the in-material form of creative works. If it had been a bar stool or glass, it would have been a one time sale and that would be it. But as recorded works can be "reproduced" a infinite number of times, the thinking soon becomes very complicated indeed. We are reaching the point where the thinking is the equivalent of a carpenter insisting on a share of the rent for life + 70 years because he was there to set up a dry wall one day.