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German Kindergartens Ordered To Pay Copyright For Songs
BBird writes "Deutsche Welle reports: 'Up until this year, preschools could teach and produce any kind of song they wanted. But now they have to pay for a license if they want children to sing certain songs. A tightening of copyright rules means kindergartens now have to pay fees to Germany's music licensing agency, GEMA, to use songs that they reproduce and perform. The organization has begun notifying creches and other daycare facilities that if they reproduce music to be sung or performed, they must pay for a license.'"
this is the apex of copyright bullshit, and it is a serious issue. "humming a song ? you need to pay us !"
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Go fuck yourselves. Sincerely, The World
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The schools should go along with it. Make the parents send money with their kid every time they're going to sing in class. Charge admission to recitals to make it clear that you have to pay for licensing to hear your kid sing. In fact, make the kids hand the money over themselves, and tell them that every time they want to sing something they have to give money away. Maybe if it gets ridiculous enough people will notice.
I have to confess, i am very happy about this. This created a lot of waves and even the most conservative media outlets reported very critical about it. I think the copyright mafia used this time a shotgun for volley fire into their own feet. Though i am sorry for the kids, i am thankful for the allies this generated. The evil demasked itself...
CU, Martin
Note that this only applies to making copies of sheet music, not merely singing the songs (or arranging, or performing, or anything else). Same sort of thing is in effect here in Canada, and I'm sure many other places. Not a wonderful policy, but not the culture-destroying terror that the summary implies.
Every culture out there in recorded and unrecorded history has had music and song. Heck, they even dug up a bone flute from 35,000 years ago. It's only in the last 70 years or so that it's become a business.
Song and dance is innate to human existence, just like food or breathing. Heck, animals sing and dance. Watch any mating pair of herons.
So now you're teaching those kids that singing a song is a business proposition, not a joyous thing. You pay to play. Talk about taking the fun out of something. And, maybe, just maybe, there won't be as many musicians because a lot of schools will eliminate music. It's just plain stupid.
By your logic, if I built a bridge, I would be owed royalties every time someone drove over it. If I built you a chair, I would be owed royalties every time you sat on it. If I wrote software, I would be owed royalties every time it's run (oh damn do I wish that was true, haha). Amazing concept: People get paid for working, not for past work that they already completed.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
So are you saying that the kids should be paid for signing? I'm confused.
Signing for the joy of it should be free. Playing music for the joy of it should be free. Just as dancing is free. I can copy a ballet and dance without royalties. What makes music special?
Education is a different business from any other; your product is not measured in profitability but rather in making better kids and citizens.
People affiliated with the german Pirate Party have created and published a song book (sorry, no english translation available) with several popular Christmas songs. They created the sheet music themselves and used only lyrics whose copyright protection has expired, so the song book can be freely used and distributed.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
The Pirate Party reacted by releasing a song book of freely licensed notesheets and song texts. That's basically a big "fuck you too" to the content cartels and their fee-squeezing lackeys. The more they're doing that sort of bullshit, the more the people are willing to rebel.
http://musik.klarmachen-zum-aendern.de/nachrichten/gemeinfreie_notenblaetter_fuer_advents-_und_weihnachtslieder_3_update-588
Nobody at GEMA looked at this lawsuit and said "Holy shit, guys, we're suing toddlers!" and had second thoughts?
No publicity is bad publicity, I know, but this is pushing it just a bit too far.
Sent from my CR-48
IMHO copying sheet music for in-class use should be fair use and should be exempted from licencing requirements.
Fuck those little bastards. They think they can sing whatever song they want and get away with it? What gives them the right? They are pretty much stealing from music industry executives. I say make them pay, retroactively even. And if I ever hear any of you so much as hum a single bar of the theme song for the show The Greatest American Hero, I will be reporting you to the proper authorities! A free education while they leach off the system and their parents isn't enough for them, oh no, they will not be satisfied until they are able to sing any song they wish without paying the publishing company that owns the song. You see, the world isn't going to end now, it is going to end when those little rug rats grow up and it will be all because they thought they could sing someone else's song for free. Well guess what, not on my watch!
From Sean Kennedy's Tales From The Afternow ( http://rantmedia.ca/afternow/ )
(from transcript http://thinkforyourself.vaillife.net/assets/afternow/01tota.streamjack.doc ) -
It was a few years later when the REAL crackdown came. The Listener’s License. What a fantastic concept. I can’t believe it. See it happened like this. There was this - there is all this piracy, see everybody was - piracy was - Uh, piracy is now what they now consider a theft. See in order to combat piracy which was getting really rampant, all this information was flowing around nobody really liked that so they wanted it gone. And they wanted to get rid of piracy. But they couldn’t stop it.
The Internet was growing everyday. No one could stem the flow so they created the Listener’s License. Started real easy. See music, legitimate music to purchase, was, you know, say 20 bucks. And then what they did was, if you signed up to get this card, you know like a loyalty program card of the day. You’d get 75% percent off. So a 20 dollar CD became a 5 dollar CD. And you could buy it legitimately. For 20 bucks you would walk out of there with 4 CD’s. Amazing.
Of course people were signing up for it in droves, I mean why wouldn’t ya? You could go buy a pirate CD for 6 bucks or you could buy the reall thing for 5. Consumers are such mercenaries. So they signed up en masse.
2 years went by, 2 years. Then it became mandatory. See if you didn’t have your listener’s license, if you couldn’t present your card, well you weren’t able to buy music. Part of the licensing agreement came when you got the card. And all of sudden people were out in the cold.
But it wasn’t just the music you know. The listener’s license was created by the conglomerates. They all got together. If you wanted to see a movie, hey if you had your listener’s license you could get in for 2 dollars. (chuckle) 2 bucks. Oh you don’t have a listener’s license, well you can’t get in. See they couldn’t control the piracy so they stopped it at its source.
If ever you were found to be a pirate or if your computer was ever found to have MP3s that weren’t appropriate on it you were eliminated, your listener’s license was revoked and you were out of the loop. It's all private enterprise, you don’t have a right to music, you never had a right to it. It's all private.
No more movies no more shows. Can’t even buy art. Cause you can scan it. What if you scanned that picture? So, regulation of course is always the first step to total domination. But we didn’t see that either. We weren’t ready for the horror.
At that time the listener’s license had huge power. Not the power it has today, I mean now. If you do not have a valid listener’s license. I mean - well in our time you can’t do anything, I mean, you’re a pirate. If you can’t present, that is part of your paperwork. It’s part of your identification. See the listener’s license, after they came out with that. That was a huge step one.
But everyone was so focused on the listener’s license they didn’t see where the REAL power play was made. See everyone was so whipped up, and the media again, you know the corporately controlled media. Got everyone focusing on the benefits and the drawbacks, a big debate over the listener’s license. But then what they didn’t see was, was the regulations that went into play on the recording equipment. See that was the one that really came back. They started putting these standards on microphones and any kind of recording media. You wanted to record, well you gotta adhere to this standard. Because this is the future. Got to make sure the quality is there.
Chips were put into place. All recording med
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Since last year, SABAM (Belgium's RIAA) charges day cares and schools for the music they play in class:
see here
Youth organizations, neighborhood parties and small businesses that play radio during work already had to pay for this (or risk being raided by the copyright cops).
It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong
they won't have any place to get their music from because no one would be publishing music anymore.
Yes, and that is only because of how our current capitalistic society works. If it is required of artists to demand money from people for goods that are in an infinite supply (and punish those that don't conform with artificial scarcity), then, through no fault of the artists, that is a flaw in our capitalistic society.
When someone violates someone else's copyright (such as downloading a song, for example), there are very few cases in which the person who owns said copyright is actually affected in the least. They never had the copyright infringer's money to begin with, so you can't claim that was stolen. They didn't lose the money, either, because as I said, they never had it. They remain completely the same as they were before. The only thing they 'lose' is an opportunity to have more money, but since they never had the object in the first place (and in almost all cases, they had no idea they even had such an opportunity to begin with), they haven't lost anything. Not time or resources (except the time and resources to build the initial product, but not only are those costs only incurred once, but it is not the fault of the copyright infringer).
It's interesting that you think that other people's time and investment isn't worth anything since the final product can be reproduced so easily.
The time and investment costs are only incurred once. However, I never said anything about their time being worthless, so that was a nice assumption (and this isn't the only assumption you made, either).
Either you fail to grasp the concept of what the actual product is (the music that took time to create and distribute, not the paper it's printed on), or you just don't care because you're a greedy bastard that thinks laws are bad because you just want shit for free. Which is it?
Nice assumptions and false dilemmas. I don't even listen to music, so I wouldn't download it or infringe upon copyright for it to begin with.
There is also more than two possible reasons I could have for making such an argument. I believe that artificial scarcity (and relying on scarcity to profit) harms society as a whole. I believe that we should not criminalize people who do not harm or even interact with the supposed 'victims' (for reasons stated above). That's not to say that I believe that artists don't deserve money. I believe that if someone likes a product (and they have the money to pay for it), they should, whilst in this capitalistic society, buy it.
Now, do I believe that we should just remove copyright laws and claim that the problem is fixed? No. That would just shift the suffering to the artists instead of the people we are currently criminalizing. I do suggest, however, that either society finds a business model that works so that we don't need to criminalize people who do no harm to others, or that we rid ourselves of our capitalistic practices.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!