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Topic: UK DJ's .... has anyone had PRS visiting their venue & Produb licence

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Hi all,

I've got PRS visiting my club next week for a routine visit. Since 1999 I've ripped tracks to my laptops and now it seems they want a £250 produb licence to allow copying from CD/vinyl to any form of media storage (HDD)

Has anyone had PRS in lately, have you been questioned about the legitimacy of the music and any comments about this insane licence would be welcome!
 
Posted Sun 22 Mar 09 @ 12:32 pm
Thanks for the quick reply Simon ..... given the huge amount of laptops and HDD controllers (Numark, Denon, Cortex etc.) it seems to me just another excuse to rip money out of people.

When you buy the CD you pay a fee, the venue also pays for a PPL licence to play the music publicly so why should there be the need for a third one?

Rip-off Britain strikes again. Maybe (like a TV licence) anyone buying a HDD controller will have to submit their name and address. What's Numarks stance on this as it may affect sales of your units?

Keith
 
I've had visits off the same PRS agent 3 times in the last 3 years. I only use a laptop exclusively for DJing. They were NOT interested in the format I was using. In fact they were not bothered that I had a few 'pirate' copies as long as I was buying some tunes, they were only interested in what tunes I was playing so that royalties could be paid to the appropriate artists. Of course this could possibly be only my agents attitude and not necessarily the same as other agents in other areas. A sensible attitude I thought.

PS The venues already had PRS licenses.
 
personally, they can all kiss my arse, I am paying nothing, I play songs, people like them, they go and buy them.

I refuse to be charged for making the artists more money.

What are they going to do? fine me? And how would they get my information? Unless they get a copper in they have no chance
 
This whole thing is not law as such. PRS are a private "not for profit organisation" and PRS could only raise a civil lawsuit but the chances of success would probably be minimal. Like you, I feel the legitimate DJ's who have already paid for this pointless licence probably are feeling a bit peeved as there's still thousands out there with copied HDD's and songs from Limewire that haven't contributed anything. In my 25 years of DJ'ing I have thousands of 12" singes and CD's bought by me, and still the Bastards want more!
 
ok interesting question, i am british and i live in Estonia, i work as a club DJ, the laws here on mp3/hdd music is unknown and you are left alone as long as you have brought the songs, i.e. i buy from itunes so they dont care they leave you alone.

They are very strict on pirate music which i am all for, i love the music industry and i think its important for the survival of music, but PRS is a complete joke and yes only in Britain lol

If i visit the UK for a gig, (maybe 4 gigs in one year) do i need to pay all that money for a license for 4 gigs? (fat chance it would ever happen as i would personally tell um to shove it) even though technically i have brought directly from the internet so i have not burned any cd's or copied from them, they are still in the same format as i brought them.


The fact of that matter is music piracy is destroying the business, they should be more interested in bringing legitimate ideas and using technology to help people to start buying music again, not hurting the people who HAVE ALL READY PAYED FOR IT!!!!!!!!

Here in the Baltics and Russia there is a huge huge piracy problem......BUT LOL there is no where they can buy music legitimately of the internet, itunes does not allow them to (im lucky as i have UK credit card).


Sorry for the large rant but i am completely against PRS, i was still in the UK when it first came out, and i think they are a bunch of thugs, steeling from hard working people who have already payed for the music, absolutely disgusting. THEY are hurting the music industry because people will result back to piracy. But i guess these idiots in suits have all the brains, well done PRS.....NOT
 
This is my point .... rather than prosecuting DJ's who have never bought a record in their lives, they are trying to extract more money out of people who have already purchased the music to "format shift" it to their PC or controller.

The mind boggles ........

Will be interesting to see what the guy says at the weekend ......I just hope he doesn't come in on Saturday night as I'll be guttered and in a bad mood when Scotland get humped by the Netherlands.
 
good luck for the visit is all i can say. let us know how it goes and any "Advice" they offer. the only time prs where going to visit the club i was at was the night after it shut down (closed after a wrapping up order of the parent company first leisure). nobody told prs that we'd shut though.
 
Yeah, First Leisure were a dodgy outfit to say the least. I never worked for them but the bar I worked in had a tie in to send people to their club.

I will call one of my mates tonight who looks after quite a few DJ's and contracts to see what his take in it is and let everyone know.

All I can say is that if they checked the contents of my PC against my vast record and CD collection they would be there for months!
 
hi matey this is not right. the point of which the music is played to the public is where the licence applys , so the way it works you are not charged for storing music on a hdd or any computer you are charged for playing music to the public and this is the norm the way they work its charges out are as follows the size of the place :ie head count of people x by the opening hours . so the the bigger the venue the more the club pays not the dj . one more point the club should have a separate licence for video if applicable also check this is not a scam because they normally sit down and work out the charges in fairly amicable way for the owners . good luck ok ok!! alarm!!! just checked this produb licence out and there does seem to be a charge on music stored on hdd that are owned by visiting dj heres the work around make the hdd on the clubs system a caddy system and part of the clubs house system . then when not in use you can remove the drive for security reasons if you get me that way you do not need a produb licence any way that seem to be the only way around this rip off charge Good luck mate

 
The bottom line seems to be that if you play music direct from the CD that's fine, but if you rip it to a compilation CD or HDD and play the SAME SONG then you need the produb licence.

I'm sorry but that's just exploitation. You pay when you buy the CD, the venue pays for a PPL licence and then they want £250+ from the DJ as well. It's just a fucking rip-off. Technology has moved on and these people need to get a fucking grip of reality.

Is it worth court costs to take a DJ on in a civil case for something that's worth £250 when they own the music anyway?

Rant over :)
 
We have a similar thing in Canada.

The question I would ask to you is... Does the Licensing body enforce this?

Who Pays for the Private Investigator? (in Canada it's AVLA)

Who Cares - The Record Company?, The Artist?,

Is there a Legal Precedent yet? - Has anyone been hauled into civil court about this?

These would be questions I would be asking, because I already had to ask them went I set up my DJ biz.


 
Hello, I subscribe to virtual dj 8 and also content unlimited. Do I need to still get a produb license to dj through an agency or does my subscription cover this.

Cheers
 
My understanding of it is:

If you're not dubbing then you shouldn't need one. As the name implies, it's intended for "format shifting" (dubbing) from one format (i.e. CD) to another (i.e. MP3).

If you're directly using legal downloads (you've not copied/dubbed them from another format) then you should be OK.

Refer to the ProDub FAQ page and you will notice the constant use of the word copy/copies. If you are using the original files then you have not made copies.

Again, this my personal POV. If you want to be 100% sure then contact PRS - but of course MRDA. :-)
 
I thought this whole pile of BS was completely dead now?
 


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