Music Licensing

[Loxtonjim]

A series of police raids on bars in Chiang Mai, including some upmarket establishments, is terrorizing owners. Groups of plain clothes police are launching late-night raids on bars that play music, confiscating equipment and CDs, imposing spot fines of up to 35,000 baht and, in at least one case, arresting bar-keepers and holding them for one nightg in the cells. Explanations vary from: "You are playing farang music" to "you have no permission." I have been told by one woman police colonel that the police have been instructed by the rights firm Grammy (Thailand's offshoot of the American conglomerate) to crack down on pirated music.

Is there anybody out there who can explain what is going on? A good barkeeper friend of mine (Thai) has been trying to discover what exactly are the regulations governing the playing of music in bars--with frustrating results. Help please!

[Oberkommando]

These shakedowns have been on the go in Pattaya and to a lesser extent, Bangkok for the last several years.

[redwood13]

There’s a company in Bangkok named 1StopMusic 1stopmusic.com that has authorization from various foreign music publishers to collect royalties for public use of copyrighted music. Most of the major foreign labels are covered, Sony, EMI, Warner and such. However not all countries are included, but see 1Stop for details. The license fee is not exorbitant.

Also any CDs played, in a bar for example, have to be originals – pirated copies of CDs or DVDs are not acceptable. Copies of of your originals are not allowed to be played publicly and no compilation CDs are allowed even if you own the original CDs. Note that even if all is well the cops are not above slipping a “primco” copy CD into the bar’s collection.

And in the case of Internet cafes, any computer found with copyrighted music downloaded on it may be subject to copyright violations.

AFAIK Thai music copyrights is a real minefield and at least some bars I know here in Pattaya will not allow it to be played at all – that includes radios. GMM Grammy (see Wikipedia) holds rights to a lot of Thai music but not all by any means.

Of course all this is just an extortionate scam. “Fines” are in the range of 40k-100k but are negotiable down to 15 to 20,000 baht. They can and have arrested bar employees. Usually the cashier in a bar (no cashier, no business can be done) and they’ve also gone so far as to remove audio equipment and in the case on one Internet shop they hauled the computers down to the cop shop. And Thai owned businesses are not excluded from any of this.

-redwood

[Penkoprod]

Some interesting threads on this that go bsck to 2007:

Tea money scam, or what?

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Music-Police-t278859.html

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Copyright-Police-t217155.html

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Music-Licenc...nt-t146787.html

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/What-s-Name-...on-t142566.html

Penkoprod

[torrenova]

Largely a scam operated by thugs based upon some real rules and regulations with police in cahoots.

Thai music is a total no no. The originals thing makes sense but everyone knows that no-one buys originals. Most people couldn't even tell you where to buy originals !

The problem is the "grey" area. Where does a computer based CD collection come in ? Now we know most will be rips and copies but what if you actually owned the originals ?

I understand you can cover your backside these days in terms of licenses but when this raised its head some 3 or 4 years ago, licenses chaged by the month and, quite deliberately I think, the way to cover all bases is deliberately not publicised. BiB have no interest in making sure people have the licenses, only fining them.

[Sel]

I had to pay it a few years ago for my mp3 collection in a ksr cafe. Think the yearly fee for foreign music was about 1200baht while the fee for thai music was over 5000baht. The licence guys had some official looking ID and came with a uniformed cop. They said they would send a official sticker to put on your window to say you have paid but mine never came and I never got hit up for the following years either. It's a very grey area but if you don't pay the cops take your music equipment.

[jackspratt]

Is the situation any different if the music is being played in a bar via a music channel on satellite TV?

Edited July 16, 2009 by jackspratt