We’ve written plenty of stories about different businesses being shaken down by various music collections societies, and the one we often hear the craziest stories about is PPL in the UK. Recently, it demanded a hardware store pay for a license. Of course, there was just one problem: the store’s owner doesn’t play any music in the store, saying that after the store is closed up for the night, he’ll turn on the radio to hear the news while he cleans up, but that he doesn’t think music is appropriate for the store. Still PPL demanded £199. After he refused to pay, PPL apparently claimed that he owed them money and passed it on to a debt collection agency, who started hounding the poor guy.

The owner, David Sleath, was finally forced to hire lawyers to try to stop the madness — and PPL’s response was to lower their demand to “just” £100, for music he did not play. Eventually, after Sleath was able to get press coverage, PPL “called him up with a grovelling apology and a promise to withdraw all invoices.” Still, he’s been stuck with legal fees, and is now trying to get PPL to pay them. It seems more and more like this is just a government sanctioned form of extortion, doesn’t it?

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