It is not unreasonable that creative people should receive financial reward for their efforts (or the economy of Jersey would collapse - but that's the subject of a future post.) After all, we wouldn't want to see Andrew Lloyd Webber or Lady Gaga languishing in a garret, now would we? (the question is rhetorical.)
But there does come a point at which the administrative costs of putting another 4p into Cliff Richard's pension fund become disproportionate, and point to the absurdity inherent not in the law of intellectual property itself, but in the application of that law to the bitter end.
The big record companies, fed up with the loss of revenue from P2P networks, are targeting churches and hairdressing salons because they are easy prey. The PPL licence was introduced on 1 January 2012 - if you play a CD or a cassette or even an MP3 in your place of work (or parish hall) you now have to cough up to keep a few dozen people in luxury for the rest of their lives. Oh, and you'll need a PRS licence as well. PRS splits your 4p two ways - 2p to Sir Andrew, and the other 2p to his publisher and record label (let them squabble over the proceeds.)
Copyright enforcers are the new brigands. That they have the law behind them means little - so do the outfits that clamp your car and demand a ransom for its release. Put a CD or a tape on in your rest room in your tea-break, or in your loo, you girls who work in hairdressing salons, and you can expect a visit from the heavies - you're playing music, and a member of the public with acute hearing could hear it - so cough up, or we break both yer arms.
The reporting requirements for small rural churches are now such as to inspire the ghost of Charles Dickens to pick up the quill again. They make the law, and certainly the application of it, look a ass. The combined PPL/PRS licence now threatens to make every keep-fit group hiring a church hall keep records of needle time across hundreds of recording labels. Not quite accurate records, of course, but approximate.
In this first year of reporting we, the church officers responsible for reporting our various hall user groups' needle time once we've collated them, only have to supply approximate percentages in four categories - Christian, classical, choral and modern pop, a ludicrous categorisation which could only have been put in place by a more than usually intelligent aardvark. That's a relief in a way, because I don't get paid by CCLI to do their tax-collecting work for them. But I am accountable to my PCC, and I am a charity trustee because I'm a member of that PCC.
So I think I am probably obliged by my trusteeship to ensure that none of our licence money goes to CD labels that haven't actually been played. Good stewardship, the Charity Commission calls it.
And that rather stands the reporting requirement on its head. CCLI should be producing the evidence that none of our church money has been paid to somebody who didn't deserve it, even if was only a fraction of a penny. For justice to be done, every group that plays music during its activities in a church hall will need a needle-time recordist who is also an expert in copyright law. Then they will know, and Sir Cliff will know, that that extra penny in his royalties that cost £25 to raise, by volunteer tax collectors, was raised lawfully.
Think I'll put a CD of Bach organ music on now to clear my head. It's 51 years old, this recording. It's the one we put on in church when it's open, so that metal thieves will think there's somebody in there, and go away. It's also out of copyright, ho-ho. Sorry, Sir Andrew. Sorry, Sir Cliff. Sorry, Your Ladyship.
combined cost to our small rural parish church of CCLI copyright licences, PPL and PRS licences this year - £300, all but a penny or two.
Lord Lloyd-Webber's personal fortune - according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2012 - is £590,000,000, give or take a bob or two. That's more than three times what David Beckham has amassed by kicking balls round fields.
