18 | Bed & Breakfast News | Summer 2017
Music licensing
and the ‘MPLC’
In June 2017, the Motion Picture Licensing
Company, MPLC (though it has been around
for 30 years), started sending demands for
payment to B&Bs and small hotels. This is
because of a change in the law last year to
harmonise it with EU law, which had the
result of allowing the playing of broadcasts
in ‘public’ places, but giving copyright
holders the right to charge for such
broadcast plays.
Case law has established that communal
areas in B&Bs and hotels (eg lounges or
dining rooms) are ‘public’ places for these
purposes. MPLC represent Hollywood film
studios and TV production companies.
The MPLC licence only applies if you have a
TV in a ‘communal’ area (eg your lounge or
dining room), and it is not only showing a
rolling news channel or live sports channel.
If you only have TVs in your guests’ rooms
and NOT in a communal area, the MPLC
licence does NOT apply. And if you have a
TV in a communal area but it is only on a
rolling news or live sports channel, the
MPLC licence does NOT apply.
We will be lobbying the Government to change
the law again to remove the ‘loophole’ that
MPLC are taking advantage of - but (especially
in view of Brexit) there is very little chance of
any change being made any time soon, so
(in the absence of a test case being brought
and MPLC losing it), unfortunately we are
stuck with yet a fourth licensing body to
contend with (after the BBC, PRS and PPL).
The following explanation is from MPLC
after the B&B Association’s invitation
to justify its licensing demands:
The law
“Television programmes and films, whether
broadcast on TV, played from DVDs or viewed
from the internet, are intended for personal,
private use only. If you wish to show the
work in public, you must have a separate
licence that specifically authorises the public
exhibition of that work.
“The rules related to public exhibition are in
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
(CDPA 1988). According to the CDPA 1988,
only the copyright owner holds the exclusive
right ‘to perform, show or play the work
in public’ § 16(1)(c) Works may be shown
without a licence in the home to a normal
circle of family and its social acquaintances
because such showings are not ‘public”.
Any performance outside a ‘domestic and
private context’ is considered a public
performance. (Ernest Turner Electrical
Instruments Ltd v PRS Ltd [1943] CH 167)