"The fatal thing is to ever accept at face value the things that you are told the law supports"

Thanks for the advice but none of us at Farlington are guilty of this. Many of us have researched the law and made our views known vociferously to Sam's. We have an outstanding query with PRS on the implications and the ways round it - again, I was simply stating the coverage of the law as I understood it. That is not the same as 'accepting at face value'. We have a lot to lose here.

Amongst ourselves we have discussed paying the PRS licence for the pub but Sam's won't contencance such inconsistency across their pubs in any case.

What I do know, from having worked in the past with some PRS inspectors (on a training course just in case you think I AM one!)is that they are extremely zealous in tracking down offenders and an inspector paid our pub a visit just before Christmas. Our chances of playing non-copyright music without hassle are even more limited now Sam's have attracted such publicity over this decision - who do you think PRS will be watching most carefully now? We can fight this, but it will probably be a long game and I am not holding my breath for a quick solution.