German Copyright Group To Collect From Creative Commons Event

bs0d3 writes "In Leipzig, Germany, an 8 hour music/dance party event was organized to play nothing but creative commons music the entire time. A German copyright group called GEMA told the organizers that to be certain that no rights were infringed, it would need a list of all artists including their full names, place of residency and date of birth. After the event GEMA sent an invoice for 200 euros. They claim that behind pseudonyms some of their artists may be hidden and produce things that they would not earn anything from. According to German law, you are required to prove that an artist is not with GEMA. So even though GEMA probably does not have rights to any of the music, they are not required to prove that they do."

Comments

Greetings Slashdot

[gazbo]

Sorry if this is off-topic, but I desperately need to find out what Sourceforge's top downloads are. Does anyone know where I can get this information???

Re:Greetings Slashdot

[TheRaven64]

I heard a rumour that VLC is one of them. If you have come to slashdot and yet somehow don't know what VLC is, it's an application for playing and streaming almost any kind of multimedia file. Pretty exciting, huh?

Re:Greetings Slashdot

[SpzToid]

Not only but that Filezilla is a really well-coded FTP client that also does SFTP. When stuck using Windows to perform tasks such as SFTP, filezilla works.

Okay I just use my Linux Gnome GUI to drag 'n drop (copy/paste) to up/download from the (linux) server, but I can understand why such a useful utility earns such a prominent spot here at Slashdot. Good news for nerds to know about, although redundant for many.

Re:Greetings Slashdot

[GameboyRMH]

Also quite popular is 7-Zip, easily the best file compression utility for Windows, with full support for .tar, .zip, .gz and all the rest including encryption features. It can extract those pesky .rar files and can even extract the content of .iso files! Very useful.

Re:Greetings Slashdot

[cornholed]

What, no mention of the Smart package of Microsoft's core fonts?

Re:Greetings Slashdot

[Stradenko]

You must be new to /. As you stay here and become part of the community, you'll find that we're almost universally willing to help out a person in need.
Enjoy your stay.

Re:Greetings Slashdot

[Gingernads]

The funny thing is: if you click on the "Sourceforge Top Downloads" (not on the projects in it, but on the title itself) on the /. homepage you get a 404 error.

Gratz, Geeknet!

Slashdotted.

Re:gema, a slave camp?

[aix tom]

Well, for some "moderate" rebellion the band "Eure Mütter" ("Your Mothers") already has a song titled "Der Typ, der bei der GEMA die Titel eintippt, ist ein ganz blöder Penner" ("The guy who enters title data at the GEMA is a very stupid bum")

And the song is basically about how they made the song just that somebody at GEMA has to enter that every time it is played. (They even made it longer than 4 minutes, so that it has to be entered in BOLD) ;-P

YouTube Video

Re:Yes

[Pieroxy]

I have long opposed extreme copyright terms and bad copyright law, and supported the public domain and creative commons licensing - but I have also supported paying artists for such work as they have copyrighted. I have always tried to buy a legitimate copy of music I like, where it has been available, and encouraged others to buy legitimate recordings.

But this is simply too much. If the copyright organizations are going to insist on collecting money for works they do not own nor represent, then they can go to hell. Really, this is just extortion. They deserve no more sympathy.

Because putting rootkits on audio CDs was deserving of sympathy? Or maybe suing Grandma to the ground? Or fucking with artists so badly they can barely afford to eat while their recording label earns millions out of them? Or being granted full power on how users must consume their media AND full power on how device builders should build their devices? Or buying a fucking law requiring a website to be offline on a simple takedown notice with no proof, due diligence or any kind justice concept incolved?

Really, I'm glad you woke up, but jeez! It was about time.