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

Privatisation of taxing

[Hentes]

This is really sick, and sadly the same here in Hungary. A specific rightsholder group is granted legal monopoly on all the music business, and there is no way for art to exist outside them. They also have the right to tax all storage media because "they would be used for piracy anyway".

Same thing in Slovenia

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked our beloved SAZAS about this matter. The question specifically was: what was your opinion on playing open-source / cc music in a waiting room? The reply was that since all authors must report to SAZAS and report their incomes and creative commons authors do not, such music was illegal in Slovenia.

Re:gema, a slave camp?

[moenoel]

As far as I know, the GEMA wants money per view for the videos on Youtube. Even if they only want a fraction of a cent, they'd bleed Google dry in matter of months with that model. Google offered to give them part of the advertising revenue from the "offending" content, but the GEMA says it's against the current German law, or some bullshit.

GERMANY HAS NO COPYRIGHT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, the TFS is bullshit. Germany has no concept of "copyright". But even many Germans don't know that.
We have "Urheberrecht", which is like "authors' right". The privilege of the original author to get something for his work. As opposed to the privilege to "copy" (usually the badly paid works of others).
The former once made sense in pre-Internet times. The latter is based on the lie that one could actually control who makes a copy of what information, and was designed to abuse artists from the very beginning.

The GEMA was originally there, to collect the money for those artists, and hand it straight to them. That service did cost a small monthly membership fee.

But nowadays, the GEMA is a bunch of 80+ dudes that keep practically all the money for themselves and buy seconds yachts and huge mansions.
While the membership fee is more expensive than what they get out for 99.9% of the artists. (I'm not even exaggerating.) Most members get something like 50 cent or less.
But GEMA acts like if you don't do anything, you're automatically a member. Without asking you.
And if you want out, they often simply act like it didn't happen and keep collecting "for you" anyway.

Oh, and their fees for "performing" a song are crazy high. High enough that no Internet radio station here could afford it, even with lots of advertising. (We tried, and had to shut down.)

Re:At this point

[TheRaven64]

You seem to be under the impression that the only 'true democracy' is a direct democracy, not a representative democracy. I suggest that you pick up a politics textbook, rather than getting your information about political terms from Wikipedia.

Democracy and republic are completely orthogonal terms. For example, the UK has a hereditary head of state and so is not a republic, but has an elected parliament so is a (representative) democracy. A state ruled by a military junta is a republic, but not a democracy. The USA is both a republic and a democracy, as is Germany.

Re:Can't they just ignore the invoice?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the "GEMA Vermutung", the GEMA assumption. As (allegedly) the vast majority of musicians are represented by the GEMA, the assumption is that any repertoire played at a public event contains music by artists which are represented by the GEMA. Since this is civil law, there is no "in dubio pro reo". Each party presents information supporting its own position and the judge decides which side has the better case. In the past, the GEMA only needed to point at its membership roster to win. That's why there is now (due to this current case) an effort going on to list more non-GEMA artists than there are on the GEMA roster, to overturn the GEMA assumption and require the GEMA to provide actual information that GEMA licensed music has been played before they can collect.

Re:No rights infringed

[Tom]

There is a criminal case ongoing against GEMA in order to determine exactly that.

GEMA is a special entity with special rights, designed long before digital distribution was even there, much less common. The law moves slowly. Pretty much everyone agrees that the GEMA rights badly need some updating.

I'll let Jefferson answer

[Quila]

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

With this in mind, US copyright was created as a balance, an incentive to people to produce in return for a LIMITED copyright before the works fell back to the public domain. Limited used to mean 14 years, as in people were personally supposed to see their own works go out of copyright to have incentive to create more to keep the money coming in.