THE Motion Picture Licensing Company has contacted licensees to highlight that they may be breaching copyright legislation if they broadcast certain programmes or films in pubs, clubs and restaurants without an MPLC licence.
Following the implementation of the MPLC licence (required in addition to the TV Licence) in January 2017, venues showing some TV programmes or films require a licence, which costs from £97.85 a year based on the size of the premises.
David Taylor, MD of MPLC, said: “The MPLC licence fee does not apply if the television only shows sport (for example Sky or BT Sport) or rolling news (such as BBC News Channel or Sky News) or music channels. To prevent liability for the fee you must have a mechanism in place to ensure that if you are only showing live sport or news or music only, no films or TV programmes are inadvertently shown to the public.”
