The thousands of karaoke bar owners throughout Shanghai have
requested that national lawmakers reconsider new copyright charges
announced last week which are scheduled to come into effect late
September.
Owners say the fees are excessive and the organizations
responsible for collecting the money would retain an unacceptably
high amount to cover their administrative costs. Yesterday they
asked the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council to meet
with business owners, consumers and industry regulators to come up
with fairer regulations. ?
The new rules were published online last week by the National
Copyright Administration. They’re seeking opinions on the new
charges before they’re implemented on September 20.
Under the rules, bar owners would pay 12 yuan (US$1.50) per room
a day to cover royalty fees for music videos. Bar owners in
Shanghai and Beijing said a room-based fee should only be one yuan
a day. In fact they’d prefer a system where fees were based on the
number of times a video was actually shown.
Currently owners pay a fee based on the total area of their
karaoke bars but the formula for deciding this is unclear and it’s
claimed open to abuse. ?
"Shanghai had 27,000 operating karaoke rooms across town which,
without any doubt, is a world record,” said Zhu Nan, an official
with the city’s Karaoke Industry Committee. “A rule that's going to
affect such a large business should be fair and decided
carefully."
The committee met with representatives of more than 30 karaoke
bars to discuss the regulation yesterday. They contend it's unfair
to charge copyright fees based on the number of rooms in a bar
since 20 to 50 percent of them can sit unused on any given day.
The rule would cost bar owners in the city 87 million yuan
(US$10.5 million) a year, said the committee. It also questioned
reports that the two organizations collecting the fees would hold
onto 20 percent of the royalties to cover their administrative
costs.
"That means Shanghai karaoke operators would pay nearly 17
million yuan (US$2 million) a year towards administration," Zhu
said.
The Ministry of Culture recently started a trial program
involving a database of music which would be connected to karaoke
operations, so charges could be made based on how often a song or
video was played.
"We think with the database it's possible to calculate what
royalty fees should be paid and it would be fairer," Zhu said.
(Shanghai Daily August 29, 2006)