Navigating Finland's icy roads - often in the dark - makes driving a taxi treacherous enough, but now the country's cabbies have a new problem to deal with: music royalty fees.

In a judgment which has infuriated the country's 9,500 taxi drivers, Finland's supreme court has ruled that cabbies must pay royalties for turning their radios on in the presence of paying passengers.

The court decided that playing music when behind the wheel amounted to giving a public performance and that the country's musicians deserved a slice of the fare.

So all cabbies will have to pay the fixed sum of £14 every year to the Finnish Composers' Copyright Society [Teosto].

The supreme court made the ruling in the case of cabbie Lauri Luotonen, who refused to settle a demand from Teosto relating to 1997/98.

Mr Luotonen says the ruling will probably force taxi drivers to keep their radios switched off or to increase their fares instead.