Buma / Stemra goes nuts and wins in NL

Posted on by Robin

The Dutch version of the RIAA is called BUMA / STEMRA and they hunt down people for their own personal gain in about the same way RIAA does.
They’ve sued a company for allowing their workers to listen to their own ipods. In NL companies apparently need to pay BUMA / STEMRA if they allow their employees to listen to the public radio. How this is possible is beyond me, as the singers are paid by the radio station when the songs are played. It’s got something to do with making the music available publicly, even though an office is not a public setting.
Anyway, even though the music on an ipod is private (or may be an audiobook) and can only be heard by one person and is presumably owned by that person, the court has decided that this falls under the public display of music and that the company should pay.
There is unfortunately no path to the court of appeals, as the company has let the deadline expire.
The country is up in arms about it – no-one can really understand this ruling and many consider it a miscarriage of justice. Now I don’t know the judge, but he must have been 90 years old and never have touched a computer in his life in order to come to conclusions like this.

Robin

 razor@edgarbv.com  https://www.edgarbv.com

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