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Published on March 29, 2008

The establishments, which have never before had to pay for airing Euro tournaments, have complained about getting scalped to show this year's matches running from June 7-29.

Recently RS subsidiary Thai Copyright Collection (TCC) said it would collect Bt5,000 for each screen over 50 inches and Bt2,000 for smaller screens. Yanyong Akrajindanon, senior executive vice president of RS Digital, said yesterday the charge was a one-time payment for the whole tournament, not a daily rate.

"Breaking it down, the cost is

only Bt65, or equivalent to the price of a bottle of beer," he said.

Yesterday RS staff fanned out over the Khao San and Nana areas in Bangkok to visit pubs and eateries.

Sutthisak Prasatkrarukarn, TCC's director of law and suppression, said RS International Broadcasting and Sport Management, which won the rights to the tournament, had complied with the Copyright Act of 1994 in collecting the fees.

Sutthisak said his company had a system to do the fee collection.

TCC is the vehicle of RS for collecting music copyright fees from entertainment places such as karaoke bars and pubs that promote RS songs to their customers. It collects from 20,000 such places, of which 1,000 have already paid the Euro fee to RS.

Yanyong said RS had already prepared to field staff nationwide to monitor possible copyright violations during the first five days of the tournament.

Chankit Trakoolwilai

The Nation