Ridiculous Item of the Day: Playing Loud Music Means Copyright Lawsuit for Public Performance in UK

Forget "making available" some songs on a P2P network—in the UK, blaring your radio too loud might make you a target for a multi-hundred-thousand-pound lawsuit for copyright infringement. The UK-based Performing Rights Society—a group that collects royalties for publishers, songwriters, and composers—has accused a car repair chain named Kwik-Fit of copyright infringement because mechanics were regularly found to play their radios loud enough for others to overhear the music. The PRS claims that it has logged over 250 incidents of Kwik-Fit employees audibly playing music since 2005. "The key point to note, it was said, was that the findings on each occasion were the same with music audibly 'blaring' from employee's radios in such circumstances that the defenders' [Kwik-Fit] local and central management could not have failed to be aware of what was going on," the judge in the case, Lord Emslie, told the BBC. "The allegations are of a widespread and consistent picture emerging over many years whereby routine copyright infringement in the workplace was, or inferentially must have been, known to and 'authorised' or 'permitted' by local and central management." The PRS insists that the fact that the music can be heard by others amounts to a "performance" of the music in public—something that is not allowed unless the business has the proper licenses to do so. Such a license would cost Kwik-Fit roughly £30,000 per year.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071008-the-next-copycrime-making-hearable-rings-up-200000-copyright-suit.html