History
PPL was formed in May 1934 by the record companies EMI and Decca Records, following a ground-breaking court case against a coffee shop in Bristol.
The coffee shop, Stephen Carwardine & Co, had been keeping its customers entertained by playing records. EMI, then called The Gramophone Company, argued it was against the law to play the record in public without first receiving the permission of the copyright owners. The judge agreed, establishing this as a legal principle. EMI and Decca formed Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL) to carry out this licensing role and opened the first office in London.
The Copyright Act 1956 led to the expansion of PPL's role to also cover the licensing of broadcasters that played recorded music. Further copyright law changes in 1988 strengthened PPL's licensing position.
Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, if recorded music is 'played in public' every play of every recording requires the permission of the owner of the copyright in that recording (usually a record company). Record companies transfer their rights in recorded music to PPL so that PPL can issue licences to businesses and effectively give them the record companies' permission for their recorded music to be played in public. "In public" is taken as meaning more than one person within earshot. If someone said they had made a public announcement, and it was made to one other person, it would be ludicrous. However to maximise fund raising this is the definition the PPL chooses to use.
In 1996, performers were given the rights to receive 'equitable remuneration' where recordings of their performances were played in public or broadcast – leading to PPL paying them royalties directly for the first time. Performer organisations PAMRA and AURA merged with PPL in 2006, leading to an annual meeting and dedicated board specifically for performers.
Read more about this topic: Phonographic Performance Limited
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)