The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #55500 Message #880376
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
01-Feb-03 - 08:07 PM
Thread Name: PELs: Exemptions?
Subject: RE: PELs: Exemptions?
It all depends what is meant by "a performance" and "an audience" and "provided for purposes ...which include the purpose of entertaining".
There seems to me every reason to understand that "an audience" just means anyone who is in earshot, "a performance" takes place whenever a tune is played or a sung is sung, and "include the purpose of entertaining" applies if you try to play music which listeners might enjoy - as evidenced for example if someone asks for a song and you sing it. And as is only good manners, when you are playing in a room in which other people have as much right to be as you, as is the case in a bar in a public house, by definition.
Those meanings may not be the intention of the drafters of the Bill - but if so, this needs to be made clear in the Bill before it becomes an Act. There is a section on definitions, but it doesn't contain the more limited and commonsense definitions we all might prefer. (I fact that is the place where "premises" is defined as "any place" - which is not exactly a limited definition - in fact, when you think of it, it is a pretty breathtaking definition in its scope. )
If all those assertions about what is not covered by the requirements of the Bill were included in the Bill, a lot of the dangers which have been descibed as "scaremongering" would indeed cease to apply. But they have not been, and there appears no intention that they will be.