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News Releases

June 7, 2016
Japanese Society for Rights of Authors,
Composers and Publishers
(JASRAC)

JASRAC Takes Simultaneous Legal Action against Beauty Salons and
Other Facilities that Use Background Music

Today, JASRAC filed a petition for civil conciliation with summary courts against 212 facilities operated by 187 businesses, which had not obtained copyright clearance even though they are using background music (hereafter “BGM”).

This is the second simultaneous legal action against facilities that use BGM without authorization following a similar operation last year. The petition filed this time included 151 beauty salons operated by 132 businesses.

At first, when JASRAC first began administering BGM usage in 2002, the majority of commercial facilities used professional BGM providers such as cable music broadcasters. Most facilities did not need to obtain copyright licenses from JASRAC individually because entities that provided BGM obtained licenses from JASRAC on behalf of the facilities they provide music to. Recently, sources of BGM have increasingly diversified (such as CDs available on the market, portable music players, PCs, Internet radio, etc.) and such usages require each commercial facility to obtain a copyright license.

BGM has been used in a broad range of businesses and JASRAC is currently requesting the cooperation of various nationwide industry organizations to resolve unauthorized usage by affiliated facilities.

JASRAC will continue to urge facilities, which do not take the necessary procedures despite repeated notices, to use BGM legally.

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