I can’t resist the opportunity to add another chapter to what is becoming an ongoing Scanning the Dial series: Animals Enjoying Classical Radio. I get the chance this time thanks to an article in the British Telegraph newspaper about a woman in the U.K. who runs a stable. She was playing a classical radio station to keep her horses mellow — until The Man caught up with her.
A British entity known as the Performing Rights Society called Ms. Rosemary Greenway to inform her that playing the radio station qualified as a “performance” and she thus owed the PRS an annual license fee of 99 pounds. Greenway opted not to pay the fee and now plays the station only when alone at the stable (only employers of two or more people have to cough up the fee).
Mrs Greenway, who keeps 11 horses at the stables, added: “You would have thought that playing music to your own horses was allowable but apparently not.
“Especially on windy days I try to play it — it gives them a nice quiet atmosphere, you can only exercise one horse at a time so it helps the others to stay calm.
A post on the blog Techdirt chronicles other targets of the PRS, including a children’s charity, car repair shops and a police station. No one is safe! I’d like to see a CHiPs-style show about the lives of PRS agents.
This incident is not unlike a case in which National Public Radio told a softcore porn queen that she couldn’t pipe her local NPR station onto her office’s hold music. (That rule is waived for public broadcasters with regard to their own stations and hold music.) As you can tell, I had fun writing about that particular incident.
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