bars fined by record company..

[usual suspect]

Heres one for you.
Over the last few days various bars have been 'raided' by officials from
the Thai record company GRAMMY...(yes you've seen the CDs onthe stalls..best of GRAMMY etc,etc.)
Seemingly the bars have been fined between 35,000-40,000b!!
even their sound-systems confiscated till payment of fine.

Can anyone shed more light on this one???

[dr dave soul monsta]

We have had reports that a local internet Caf'e had a computer unit removed as well as his wife taken to the police station the fine was 100,000 thb
a well know bar on selakarn also has had a computer unit removed and was requested to pay a fine in the region of 50,000 im sure more reports of this will follow, all farangs owned computers at present no reports of any Thai nationals having computers removed or being fined .....
Draw your own conclusions

[Farang]

'
Grammy-scam, anyone?
,

[lomuamart]

Just mentioned this to my wife and she says it's nothing new for Thai bars. In the past plenty of karoke places have had all their equipment removed and fined heavily (she wasn't sure how much).

[ozuncle]

You need a licence to play music in public places in Aus and probably all other countries. This ios the Aus association that collects the money.

http://www.apra.com.au/music-users/default.aspountries.

Their fees have over the last 3 years gone up about 500% and they insist on signing a contract for I think 3 years agreeing to future increases.

It was too much for me so we now have a quiet restaurant.

[barrys]

Just got back from the MiB station in HH after a friend with a small bar and guest house phoned to say that his place was raided and the computer taken into custody.
They threatened to put his wife in jail unless he paid THB 100,000.
After negotiation they eventually settled for THB 35,000 and the computer was returned.
This has apparently been going on for about a week, now, and by the looks of things they're targeting all bars that have computers with music stored on them.

[BaaBaa.]

Not good news.

Looks like the MIB hua hin need some money this week.

[JW]

Can they legally impose these fines, me thinks not - lhope someone stands up and says "lets go to court" and see what happens! JWs computer safely hidden until this is sorted out, noticed last night that the music available on UBC was being used in loads of bars!
Place beside me was done for 40k last night - our staff warned them in the afternoon!

[buksida]

Sounds like a scam to me. Let them take the computer, you can get a new one for 12k, external hard disks are also advisable. Unless these guys work for RIAA I imagine they can only issue copyright warrants and fines for pirated Thai music, if they are issuing fines then there should be paperwork, otherwise it goes into someones "whiskey fund".

To prosecute for music piracy they need to check the MD5 hash (a hidden string of code unique to every file) of every MP3 file to determine whether it is genuine or not - this is a very long process for a large collection.

[panovtours]

I'd Like to thank Barry fo assisting me last night after the "raid",
Also i'd mention that the these grammy police used intimidation to frighten my wife in order to get 200,000bts (that was there first demand)
My wife was threatened with jail time to extort money, and thats all it is.
The computer was returned with the music intact, but be warned they were only looking for ferrang music, so i'd imagine the Thai Grammy police will be paying huahin a visit next week..
So if youv'e been caught you could still posible be done for the Thai music.
Also after the fine we were told that we could play the music for the next 3 months untill an official comes round to sell us a liscence to play the music.
Maybe they should have asked us to purchase liscence in the first place, but they decided on the extortion route.

[webmaster]

Buksi 100% agreed.

My question is, did they give you a ticket, receipt or anything that states you have paid XXX amount of money for violating this law?

That document can be quite handy in the future. If this the new scam then wait for the BSA (Business Software Alliance http://www.bsa.org) raiding your offices as they have done in 2001.

[panovtours]

yeah they gave me paperwork stating recipt of the fine,
and i wouldn't be suprised if the bsa turned up, seeing as they didn't get their full wak (200,000).

[Norseman]

Yup, 35.000 Bt thank you!!
Some bars got fined 35 big, but a lot of them new what was coming so all legal cd's found saw daylight for the very first time.
You really need friends when inspections are imminent.

[DawnHRD]

Sorry, I'm confused. Are these police or representatives of the Thai Grammy record co? Does this company hold a monopoly over all farang music owned/played in Thailand?

Anti-piracy police, I understand, although I still think it sounds dodgy. But where does this record company fit into all this? Most of my music (on cd's - I'm that much of a dinosaur!) was purchased outside Thailand, so Grammy can't have had anything to do with it. The fact that they weren't bought through Grammy doesn't make my cd's illegal, though.

[Norseman]

They only checked and fined the pc-operating music systems.
Most of the bars with cd systems simply swopped personal recorded cd's with original cd's.
Not easy when the content are stored on a hard disk.