chance

~Susan

 Subject to the licensee's responsibility to ensure safety and nuisance to others, you can express yourself verbally in a public house.

 Subject to the above and with the licensee's permission you can also express yourself musically in a public house, without further licensing, such as a Public Entertainment Licence, being required.

 This licensing legislation is for the safety and interests of all members of the public, at staged Public Entertainment with performers. It can really serve no useful purpose when, it is stretched to be used to against and to limit the freedom of expression of, those very same members of the public in establishments where, their safety and interests are already ensured by the council's other statutory duties.

Will pass it on.

SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors & Music Publishers of Canada) sent a number of these small shops an invoice (not sure how much) because they were playing SOCAN registered music. The store owners, and I've heard of at least three, have declined to pay, and have decided to stop playing this music.

Sad but true.

It would have been nice to hear what your opinion was on the issue rather that your opinion on how we are trying to address it.

Your opinion on that would probably be better in a personal message, or you could just have chosen to ignore it altogether.

You rightly say is this an important issue so why clutter it up with conversations about how we address it?

I will enter in to as much conversation about the method of addressing the issue with you or anyone who cares to in Personal Messages but will not help you to divert attention from the real issue by doing it publicly

I feel that most of the people The Mudcat really care about the right to make music and freedom of expression. I feel they will understand and I hope forgive me if the methods appear clumsy or are possibly counter-productive.

Let us please just get together and fight the enemies of free speech and not each other.

JOE has made a VERY GOOD point!!!!