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

Re:Privatisation of taxing

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing in Spain. Except that the group got recently busted for a major corruption and money laundering scheme, so we might get lucky and get to see its demise. Not that I'm holding my breath that whatever replaces it will be any better.

Can you play Germany's national anthem for free?

[peppepz]

In Italy, GEMA's equivalent asked a non-profit organization to pay them 1.094,40 € because they played the national anthem in public. They say it's required because, "even if the original author of the anthem died more than 70 years ago" (in 1849 actually), they are authorized to collect royalties over the "printed musical sheets as confirmed by European Directive 2001/29/EC article 5".

This is beyond ridiculous. These people live outside of reality (and at our expense).