Belgian Rightsholders Group Wants To Charge Libraries For Reading Books To Kids 244
New submitter BSAtHome writes "People with a healthy interest in fundamental freedoms and basic human rights have probably heard about SABAM, the Belgian collecting society for music royalties, which has become one of the global poster children for how outrageously out-of-touch-with-reality certain rightsholders groups appear to be. This morning, word got out in Belgian media that SABAM is spending time and resources to contact local libraries across the nation, warning them that they will start charging fees because the libraries engage volunteers to read books to kids. Volunteers. Who – again – read books to kids."
Re:Crazy! (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't you get the memo? Even birdsongs are copyrighted.
Re:Crazy! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the link to relevant story: link [slashdot.org]
Summary is incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
Fascinating the greed that impacts simple people every day live and to to what use?
There is a communication on sabam's website to rectify the miscommunication that appeared in the media, they did not charge the library 250 euro, no it was only 239 euro's but for playing music in the library.
For a public reading they would collect 15 euro's per public reading if the work is protected and the rightsholder is represented by sabam.
Do not and did not collect this fee.
Re:Are they doing this on purpose? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, maybe sometime before the advent of radio it was a trivial competition between 'reading' and 'backbreaking domestic drudgery' for the home entertainment market; but that hasn't been true for a while...
Even better: it's a "misunderstanding" (Score:5, Informative)
SABAM (the group in question) said, in a response, that it was a misunderstanding [google.com] (translated, Dutch original [standaard.be]). They charge 15 euro per public reading, and they cannot distinguish between adults and children. They always have to charge (their words, not mine).
For those of you wondering where the misunderstanding is: they invented a nice strawman for that, by saying that the library wasn't yet slapped with a yearly fee of about 250 euro. Which is true, that hadn't happened yet. But, from the sound of it, SABAM has every intention to do so.
Thankfully, this hasn't gone unnoticed. SABAM is losing favour with politicians [google.com]. Hopefully this storm will go somewhere. Note that SABAM isn't the only rightsholder club in Belgium (there apparently is some competition! yay free market!), so dissolving them ought to be an option.
They are horrible (Score:5, Informative)
As a belgian I can only confirm that they are the most horrible kind of "rightsholder group" you can imagine. Some of their "royalties" include. An extra tax on every dataholder (empty CD's, hard drive's, memory cards, ipods, etc...), local bands have to pay a fee when they perform even when they only perform their own songs (because they are influenced by ...), they collect fee's from doctors waiting rooms, pubs, private parties, buses, even on the work-floor when there is music playing, ...
Re:Are they doing this on purpose? (Score:2, Informative)
SABAM has a weight of legislation that gives it authority to do this. It is not doing this especially for the benefit of the creators of the works but because they are licensed to. They have no qualms taking a fee from gig's where the band plays all their own songs! The band, I can assure you never sees the royalty.
I understand that civil process takes a long time in Belgium. Not many people have the resources or patience to test them in a court of law. Hopefully idiotic activities like this report will continue until the weight of opinion swings so hard that a balance is finally brought...
Re:They are horrible (Score:4, Informative)
confirmed; sadly enough.
Pay em (Score:1, Informative)
The libraries should pay them. If its Belgian law, they should honor it. The fees incurred can be collected from the parents of the children getting read the books. If the parents don't want to pay, they can just not send their child to the library. All pretty simple, really.
If the parents don't like the above solution, well I guess they have the option to try and change Belgian copyright laws.
Any other action would be tantamount to anarchy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Crazy! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, if anyone can hear you sing.
I wish it weren't true, but sadly it is. This is why in the U.S. when you are given a "birthday cake" by a restaraunt, the waitresses cannot sing the standard "happy birthday" song and instead have to make up their own tune and their own lyrics, which don't invoke the same feelings that the standard song would have if they were allowed to sing it. This is an area of copyrights that I find invasive and counterproducitve.
Re:Crazy! (Score:5, Informative)
"Happy song-day to you,
We wrote this for you.
We'd sing you the real one,
But it's copyright too."
Re:Summary is incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
the summary is correct. SABAM clearly states that they want 15 euros per public reading (if the work is "protected"). and the GP knows this, still he acts as if this is perfectly normal. And, in the message by SABAM, they make it pretty obvious that they intend to ask for these +/- 15 euros whenever they can.
just check their webpage, in french or dutch, if you don't believe me (this incident is not mentioned on the english version).
Re:Public outrage. (Score:5, Informative)
It did. The story is about a week old. After it broke SABAM claimed that the library in question does pay about 250 EUR, but it isn't for reading books but for music played in the library. SABAM said that it does collect money for public readings of books but it's only 15 EUR and the book has to be in copyright and be written by one of their member. (Source, in dutch [demorgen.be].)
All of this is BS of course these people try to collect on EVERYTHING and as much as possible. They're regularly collecting money for artists that aren't affiliated with them and tend to go after "soft" targets that don't have resources to fight back. They're scum.
Re:SABAM members don't have kids (Score:5, Informative)
The estuary of the Scheldt is the ideal place to assemble a fleet to invade England.
England didn't want the Dutch, French, Austrians, Spanish or whatever passed for Germans at that time to have it.
Now, they'd have been happy to garrison it, for the benefit of its populace of course, just like they had for ... well, most of the world actually. But there was one slight problem.
See, the Dutch, French, Austrians, Spanish and whatever passed for Germans at that time didn't want the English to have a beachhead on the mainland, because they'd misbehaved somewhat on more than one occasion when they still had Calais. Go back a bit further to when the limey buggers still had Aquitaine; they managed to start a war that went on so long they actually lost count of how many years it lasted and had to just bloody guess when it came to naming it.
Hence, the only solution to the impasse was to invent a fictional entity to put it in. Sort of like Washington DC.
Re:Public outrage. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Crazy! (Score:5, Informative)