From: "John Chambers" > We've recently seen things like the attempt to prosecute > the Girl Scouts for singing copyrighted songs around the > campfire. They did back off on that one, but only after a > lot of publicity and outrage. There are all the attempts to > stop things like pub sessions, or make participants pay for > they right to "perform" their own compositions and/or very > old tunes. The goal overall is a world in which you and I > have to pay the oligopoly for the right to play any music, > even our own, in private settings.
So there's a world plot is there? I thought it was just the UK government who have new laws for public entertaiment in England and Wales. One aspect of it is that although the licence costs no more if you want live entertainment, you have to state it on your application and have an annual inspection and could face �1,000s in terms of improvement. This is done in the name of noise and saftey (although existing laws could be applied) but things like playing recorded music or showing a soccer on wide screen tv are exempted even though they can be more noisey, a football match on tv can draw more people into a pub than a few accousitic folk musicians, etc. I fear that many pubs will not ask for live entertainment to avoid hassle and I fear for the future of our music. I'm also quite disgusted with the way the law gives unfair advantage to those already with power and money. Jon To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
