Over the last few years, we’ve noted that various collection societies around the globe have become both more aggressive and more ridiculous in trying to get people to pay licensing fees for listening to music. Among the crazy stories that have popped up are cases of collection societies demanding cash from a woman who played music for her horses in a stable, a police station told to pay up because some police officers had a radio on and the public entering the station could hear it, hotels being told they need to pay an extra performance license because guests listen to radios in their rooms and, of course, the claim that ringtones (even legally licensed ringtones) require another license as a public performance. In some cases, these societies apparently hire people to just call up businesses and if they hear music in the background, they demand payment.

Every time we post this kind of thing, people joke that it won’t be long before they want to charge people a separate license for listening to music in your car with the windows rolled down. We haven’t quite reached that point yet, but the Belgian collection society SABAM, who was recently caught accepting payments for made up bands, is now claiming that truck drivers listening to the radio need to pay a performance fee as well, since the cabs of their trucks are technically their “workplace.”

This seems pretty extreme, even by traditionally insane collection society standards. Most of them admit that they only seek to collect fees in cases where the public might hear the music. Going after truck cabs seems beyond ridiculous — and thankfully some in the Belgian Parliament seem to agree, with one MP saying, “it’s utter nonsense.” Still, SABAM seems to be standing by their right to collect in such cases, perhaps not realizing what an incredible laughingstock this makes them, and how it just makes people respect copyright less and less when such stories get out.

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