YouTube Ordered To Remove "Illegal" Copyright Blocking Notices

An anonymous reader writes in with new developments in a two-year-old spat between YouTube and GEMA (a German music royalty collection foundation). After the courts ordered YouTube to implement tools to block videos that contained music GEMA licenses, it seems that telling users why content was blocked isn't making GEMA happy. From the article: "GEMA applied for an injunction to force YouTube to change the messages, claiming that they misrepresent the situation and damage GEMA’s reputation. YouTube alone is responsible for blocking the videos, claiming otherwise is simply false, GEMA argued. ... Yesterday the District Court of Munich agreed with the music group and issued an injunction to force YouTube to comply, stating that the notices 'denigrate' GEMA with a 'totally distorted representation of the legal dispute between the parties.' Changing the message to state that videos are not available due to a lack of a licensing agreement between YouTube and GEMA would be more appropriate, the Court said." The messages currently reads, "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights." Seems pretty neutral. Non-compliance with the order could result in fines of €250,000 per infraction.

Comments

Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotten whine

Re:Sour grapes

[Penguinisto]

So has anyone check to see what the takedown message says in German?

Basically what I'm getting at is this: We know what it says in English, but maybe the translation came out to be something not-so-nice.

Re:Sour grapes

[khellendros1984]

Dieses Video ist in Deutschland leider nicht verfügbar, da es mÃglicherweise Musik enthÃlt, für die die erforderlichen Musikrechte von der GEMA nicht eingerÃumt wurden.

Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany, because it possibly contains music for which the necessary music rights weren't granted by GEMA. (My own translation, although a native German speaker would be better).

It seems like the English that was previously posted matches the meaning very closely (IMO).

Re:Sour grapes

[chilvence]

It says "Der typ der bei der GEMA die titel eintippt, ist ein ganz bloeder penner", which is perfectly fair if you ask me.

What do they expect it to say?

[rebelwarlock]

"We can't show you this video because we're super lame. Also GEMA is the shit. You should give them money."

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the German phrasing is not satisfactory. Perhaps it should threaten Poland more strongly.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[TangoMargarine]

I'd be interested to see the phrasing in German if somebody could post it. It would be informative.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Anonymous Coward]

GERMAN:

Dieses Video ist in Deutschland leider nicht verfügbar, da es möglicherweise Musik enthält, für die die erforderlichen Musikrechte von der GEMA nicht eingeräumt wurden. Das tut uns leid.

ENGLISH:

(“Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany, as it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the necessary music rights. We apologize for this.”)

*** from:

https://www.gema.de/en/press/press-releases/press-releases-longform/article/landgericht-muenchen-urteilt-gema-sperrtafeln-auf-youtube-sind-rechtswidrig.html

Pressekontakt:
Ursula Goebel, PROPOGANDA MINISTER, LoLz (sorry, but.. ;)
E-Mail: ugoebel@gema.de, Telefon: +49 89 48003-426

- comments appear disabled as well..

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can the claim Youtube's statement false?

It isn't Youtube wanting to block it, that's why GEMA had to get a court order to get them to do it.

It's wrong to claim the court are why, because the court only ruled so because GEMA did not want "their stuff" used like this.

The ONLY reason why this happened is because GEMA wants it.

If GEMA DID NOT want this, they could merely not forbid the use of the work.

It's 100% GEMA's decision.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[TangoMargarine]

GEMA tells YouTube to block the videos, YouTube does, and GEMA complains that YouTube is actually telling the users why they're blocked instead of telling them how awesome GEMA is(n't). This seems about as reasonable to me as Breivik complaining that he isn't getting blowjobs in that cushy Norwegian jail he's in for 2 years or whatever.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[gbjbaanb]

Well, it could say "This video is blocked because we didn't want to pay the required licence fees", which would be just as accurate.

By mentioning GEMA and saying nothing about Youtube implies that it is nothing to do with YouTube at all. Any other commercial company that wanted ad revenue from broadcasting someone else's videos without permission would get hammered on /.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part where Youtube somehow struck a deal with rightholders in other countries? It kinda hints on who's demanding too much here.

Did you also miss the part where GEMA's common modus operandi is to demand revenue even from videos they aren't even in position to give permission to?

PS: Just read other comments on this page to get the idea of what kind of greedy bottomfeeders are GEMA.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Carewolf]

It isn't Youtube wanting to block it, that's why GEMA had to get a court order to get them to do it.

Only for a handfull of videos. Most of the blocked videos are unrelated to GEMA and has never been requested blocked by GEMA. Hence the court-order that Youtube can no longer lie and pretend this isn't purely something they are doing as part of their negotiations with GEMA.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the notice doesn't say they have been requested to block it, does it? Read what it says carefully.

Thing is, even if it's not explicitly "requested blocked by GEMA", but have not been licensed by GEMA, German court have decided that Google is directly liable for infringement. That is, they think that when a user from North Bumfuckistan uploads a video, Google must get a definitive proof that this Northbumfuckistanian, who only ever seen Germany on the map, either has properly licensed it with GEMA or that he doesn't need to license it with GEMA.

Google said "Fuck this noise" and started doing what it does now, saying that it "may contain" music that needs license and they didn't see one.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems about as reasonable to me as Breivik complaining that he isn't getting blowjobs in that cushy Norwegian jail he's in for 2 years or whatever.

Does it come as a surprise to you that amongst his plethora of terrible person characteristics (narcissist, coward, pseudo-intellectual, omega male, mommy issues, delusions of grandeur), he's also a whiny manbaby? He claimed to believe that he would be executed by the police after he was done gunning down kids, he then believed he would be sentenced to death, then a shadow court trial, then that he would be tortured during interrogations and again during imprisonment etc. He is not a clever man.

Hyperbole aside, he's in jail for an indefinite period of time, of which he must do a minimum of 10 years. He might never see the outside world. If he wishes to live, he should be happy with that arrangement. Despite modern day Norwegians being mostly quiet, forgiving and non-violent (imports aside), I'm fairly confident that he will stand toe to toe with the Grim Reaper within 6 months of his release.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[nurb432]

"404".. in effect. They dont want to take responsibility for censorship.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Calavar]

Whenever a company is notified of a copyright infringing video, it has two options. It can take down the video, or it can allow the video to remain up and collect a fraction of advertizing revenue as the licensing fee. Some companies (Vevo, for example) regularly choose the latter option. GEMA did not, meaning that it refused to license it's property to Youtube.

Youtube's description is actually rather forgiving because it suggests that GEMA simply might not have gotten around to making a licensing agreement yet, while the reality is that GEMA was already presented with the option to license the works and actively refused to do so.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[Gadget_Guy]

GEMA did not, meaning that it refused to license it's property to Youtube.

Did you miss the part in the they already had a license agreement, but that it ended because they Youtube didn't want to pay the price that GEMA was asking? From the article:

"In 2007 the entities reached a licensing agreement for YouTube to use works from GEMA's extensive repertoire. Two years later negotiations to extend that deal broke down when GEMA's long-term demand of around 0.12 Euro per stream was rejected by Google."

That doesn't sound like they were refusing to license its property; it just suggests that they wanted more money than Google was willing to spend.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[CHIT2ME]

GEMA ict shiest!!!

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[allseason radial]

Well, it could say "This video is blocked because we didn't want to pay the required licence fees", which would be just as accurate.

No it wouldn't. YouTube didn't post the content, there is absolutely no reason at all that they should be responsible for paying for it. Their sole responsibility is to comply with the court's order, no matter how unjust, unfair, and biased it is. IMHO, it is certainly not within any court's purview to dictate the message that YouTube posts while complying with its order.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[gbjbaanb]

Youtube's business model is based around carrying these videos. If they allow others to upload on their behalf, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that can sit back and say "nothing to do with us".

The court can find that Youtube is defaming or misrepresenting the original order, and can then order a further judgement - and youtube will comply with that one too.

There's no excuse for not acting responsibly, posting childish messages that imply an agenda are really only suitable for advertising.

Re:What do they expect it to say?

[TangoMargarine]

*"GEMA ist Scheisse" would be the correct way to spell that (or es-tset if you prefer).

Umm ok

[Anonymous Coward]

So if someone in Germany uploads a video containing copyright material from GEMA, Youtube should pay a fee?

Just inform the user that your video will be deleted and remove it.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

So if someone in Germany uploads a video containing copyright material from GEMA, Youtube should pay a fee?

I don't know what the law says in Germany, but that's not entirely unreasonable as a premise. It's not a self-evident truth that sites hosting user-submitted content like YouTube should get a free pass for what would otherwise clearly be infringing redistribution under some sort of safe harbour rule, even if that's the way many western states have decided to handle the issue for now.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Then all GEMA has to do it write a bot to upload content to YouTube. Skip step 2 and go directly to 3.) profit!

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If GEMA themselves uploaded the content with the intent that YouTube would redistribute it, then clearly they can't turn round and argue that YouTube was acting without consent when that redistribution happens.

Re:Umm ok

[bickerdyke]

No. When someone WATCHES a video that contains music liscenced by any royality collecting agency that the GEMA has an agreement to collect the german liscence fees for.

The same way that YouTube pays the according fee when someone in another country watches a video that contains music.

Re:Umm ok

[tlambert]

It's not a self-evident truth that sites hosting user-submitted content like YouTube should get a free pass for what would otherwise clearly be infringing redistribution under some sort of safe harbour rule, even if that's the way many western states have decided to handle the issue for now.

Actually, it's handled by them having to be responsive to takedown notices, at no insignificant cost in fielding those notices. And, in fact, they are responsive to takedown notices.

I think a reasonable alternative would be to put up "this video removed due to takedown notice by XXX. Here's their email address: xxx@example.com".

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The thing is, with the exponential distribution potential and the speed of the modern Internet, taking something down 24 hours after it goes up has little value if 90% of the people who wanted to rip it already did anyway. When the current copyright frameworks were established, that kind of near-instantaneous, near-effortless, widescale distribution of a work simply wasn't practical, and no-one designed the system to allow for it.

Re:Umm ok

[Arker]

"If GEMA themselves uploaded the content with the intent that YouTube would redistribute it, then clearly they can't turn round and argue that YouTube was acting without consent when that redistribution happens."

Sure they can. Who is going to stop them? Not this court.

Even if they had the will, it's trivial to cover ones tracks in such a situation. They can do it and just pretend it was someone else and unless they are terminally stupid at some point you will never know, let alone be able to prove, they did it.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The point would be that in a situation where the hosting service had to take responsibility for the material they were serving, they'd presumably have to satisfy themselves of its legitimacy before serving it. That might make their business more expensive to run, and as a society we've decided for now not to impose that burden, so we created safe harbour arrangements.

Even so, the world doesn't owe the operators of major Internet hosting sites a living, any more than it owes one to the big record labels or movie studios or game developers or book publishers. Requiring someone who's redistributing copyrighted material, from their own extremely profitable website, to take some responsibility if that redistribution would normally be illegal isn't an absurd alternative model.

Re:Umm ok

[gbjbaanb]

You can say "no insignificant cost", others could say "attracting large advertising revenue while its still up".

Perhaps they should donate all the ad revenue for illegally uploaded videos to the licence holder, or to charity, for the duration of its time being shown by them.

That said, I think it would be hilarious if a dodgy video of you got posted to YT, and when you asked for it to be taken down they put "this video removed due to takedown notice by tlambert. Here's their email address: tlambert@gmail.com".

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Coward]

That might make their business more expensive to run

Only their business? What you propose basically equates to making it only accessible to big labels.

Imagine if YouTube (as well as Vimeo, LiveLeak, Vine and everyone else) required every uploader to prove they have the right to everything in their video in all the countries around the world where YouTube is available. Note that this proof would also necessarily have to be good enough for them to have legal recourse against those acting in bad faith - remember, no safe harbor, meaning miss anything and get sued.

Note, we're not talking just something obvious like John Smith uploading Beyonce clip. With some of world's copyright agencies, as people already mentioned here, John Smith performing his cover of Beyonce's song or John Smith performing his own song remotely similar to Beyonce's, or John Smith uploading a lolcat video with Beyonce heard from next room could lead to costly disputes.

The best way to take responsibility for them in this case would be just to tell John Smith to go and get fucked^Whis own website.

TL;DR: you're advocating "guilty until proven innocent" which would make it all but impossible for an average Joe to upload something for the world to see.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the illegal uploaders should give Youtube their legal address so Youtube could sue them for the ad revenue they had to donate to licence holder, then.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What you propose basically equates to making it only accessible to big labels.

Why? I have several personal domains, and each of my companies has more. None of these are on the scale of big labels, or anywhere close, yet all of them publish material of their own creation from their own facilities and all of them are responsible for their own content.

TL;DR: you're advocating "guilty until proven innocent" which would make it all but impossible for an average Joe to upload something for the world to see.

That's a mighty leap.

For one thing, as noted above, it's not impossible at all for an average Joe to upload something for the world to see, he'll just have to pay the true cost of sharing it. If he's not breaking any laws, he won't have any costs there. His ISP probably gives him a load of web space for free in most places, and he can wrap that in his own domain for a tiny amount of money each year. And if his material is really good and attracts a large audience requiring extra bandwidth, he'll easily be able to fund a bit of dedicated hosting through spin-off sales, advertising or other such arrangements, since he'll be free to make whatever arrangements he wants in this respect. All of this has been true for decades, and using these facilities requires different skills than uploading material to YouTube or Imgur or wherever, but not significantly greater or more difficult skills.

I suspect that the centralisation of content distribution that has happened because of high profile blogging and video sharing sites is in reality a net loss to our global, on-line society. It has created distortions and weaknesses in the Internet that weren't necessary, it has concentrated power and introduced single points of failure, but most of the benefits go to a new generation of middleman service that doesn't actually do any of the creative work that generates real value than the old middlemen like record labels and book publishers.

In any case, I'm not sure how you get from being forced to take responsibility for your actions if they are against the law to being guilty until proven innocent. It's more like not having a get out of jail free card when you're running a business that makes vast amounts of money by distributing content, much of which is being provided by people who don't have the rights to distribute it, when you know very well that this is happening and quite possibly your site only reached its dominant position by encouraging or at least turning a blind eye to such uses in its earlier days. Whatever the "greater good" arguments in favour of safe harbour arrangements today, I don't see why any of these services necessarily deserves that get out of jail free card.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Coward]

What you propose basically equates to making it only accessible to big labels.

Why? I have several personal domains, and each of my companies has more. None of these are on the scale of big labels, or anywhere close, yet all of them publish material of their own creation from their own facilities and all of them are responsible for their own content.

The best way to take responsibility for them in this case would be just to tell John Smith to go and get fucked^Whis own website.

I was clearly talking about sites with user contributed content there. Do you mean to say "Of course there's easy way to make sites like YouTube and Vimeo accessible to everyone - everyone should just get their own domains and not use sites like Vimeo and Youtube!"? And same would apply to Flickr, Imgur, DeviantArt, all wikis, pastebins and public repositories.

Everyone should get his own personal website to post his kitty photos! Preferably, encrusted with beautiful Under Construction GIFs.

Anyways, on to the rest of your argument.

You're kinda contradicting yourself there. You're speaking all at once about "true cost of sharing" (what's that, anyways? How much must I pay for sharing what I created? Is this some kind of privilege?), "won't have any costs" and how if people like one's music one must start sales, advertising and "other such arrangements" to keep it available. Got no money and no marketing skills? Get out and leave true art to people who can pay true cost of sharing!

You're also quite pushing the plausibility with the claim that getting a web hosting account, setting up and managing a website - that's just before you get to uploading your videos - and then setting up ads and/or "other such arrangements" if you're suddenly popular is "not significantly more difficult" than getting a Youtube account and hitting "Upload".

I'm not sure how you get from being forced to take responsibility for your actions if they are against the law to being guilty until proven innocent.

You got there when you assumed they are against the law before it was even proven by, you know, the law. You proposed that instead of rightsholders establishing guilt of infringing party, as it is now, everyone must establish their innocence before rightsholders.

If you can prove that "you know very well that this is happening and quite possibly your site only reached its dominant position by encouraging or at least turning a blind eye to such uses" - that's when you rightfully sue.

Re:Umm ok

[tlambert]

The thing is, with the exponential distribution potential and the speed of the modern Internet, taking something down 24 hours after it goes up has little value if 90% of the people who wanted to rip it already did anyway. When the current copyright frameworks were established, that kind of near-instantaneous, near-effortless, widescale distribution of a work simply wasn't practical, and no-one designed the system to allow for it.

You're right; so we either need to revamp copyright frameworks, or give up on using the Internet. Guess which one I pick?

In all seriousness, both RIAA and MPAA have been asking for some magic-ass technology that we technologists keep telling them is not possible due to the halting problem, and they keep insisting that we magically solve the halting problem for them. Then they ask that we implement DRM that actually works so that they don't have to change their business model, even when we tell them, again, it's impossible to create a 100% effective DRM.

I've suggested before that if the RIAA and MPAA want to stop digital redistribution of their copyrighted works, the best way to do this would be to go back to analog distribution, where it costs additional $$ to create a physical artifact as a container for their copyrighted material, and thys they can take margins from the economies of scale from physical production vs. the cost of a one-off copy.

Unfortunately, both RIAA and MPAA want to have all the benefits of digital distribution, while at the same time having none of the drawbacks.

If RIAA and MPAA are capable of solving the halting problem themselves, I'm sure that Google would be first in line to license the patent, and would probably be willing to pay a really outrageous amount for the privilege, but until then, the rest of us get to live in the real world, and in the real world, I can always analog hole and DRM scheme you come up with, and for video, I can even digital hole it by pretending I'm an LVDS display built out of discrete ICs, so unless you start licensing use of discrete ICs, you are still SOL on the DRM pipe dream.

So the idea that these idiots, just like everyone else on the Internet, can scan all the content uploaded to Youtube, and then submit takedown notices is, I think a fair and balanced approach, given that they submit them for both licensed and unlicensed content, indiscriminately, and we have to live with the consequence of them taking down things they have absolutely no rights taking down, like performance pieces licensed under creative commons and uploaded by the performers themselves, who then have to go through an unfair cost to get the takedown reversed.

This is totally aside, mind you, from the fact that, unlike real theft, or your other analogy of sleeping in someone's house, that the rights holder in this case is never derived of the use of their property, as would be the case were we talking about the physical theft of an LP or someone squatting in your living room.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You're right; so we either need to revamp copyright frameworks, or give up on using the Internet. Guess which one I pick?

The same one as the rest of us, I assume, though I think that's a false dichotomy.

To me, the appropriate change to copyright would simply be a dramatic reduction in the duration of copyright protection for most works, reflecting the fact that almost all of the economic benefit for works that are expensive to produce and widely distributed normally happens in the first few years after publication. Different rules could apply for types of works that by their nature make their returns more slowly, but based on the realistic economics of each industry rather than implausible arguments about hypothetical losses from rightsholders. Continuing to protect Star Wars, Mickey Mouse and the works of The Beatles in 2014 is clearly not necessary to promote the creation of new works, and it clearly wasn't necessary when those works were originally created either.

Attempts to restrict further use of works beyond that point through technological measures, or more generally the use of copy protection measures that might have that result (such as requiring the existence of a server to access a work when that server might later disappear) should IMHO result in immediate forfeiture of copyright protection and compulsory disclosure of an unrestricted copy of the work unless either the problem is corrected within a reasonable period or an unrestricted copy of the work is lodged in escrow with a national reference library or similar organisation for release into the public domain after the expiry of the copyright.

On the other hand, given such a reasonable downsizing of copyright to reflect the inexpensive and rapid distribution enabled by modern technology, I would also have no problem with actually enforcing copyright laws, as long as they were first clarified so that everyone could reasonably be expected to know whether their behaviour was lawful and so that the penalties for infringement were proportionate to a realistic level of assumed damage rather than the crazy arguments made be either side at the moment.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I was clearly talking about sites with user contributed content there. Do you mean to say...

Why is that alternative such an absurd idea? Hardly anybody actually needs these centralised sites to host their content. We could just as well have maintained the earlier spirit of the Internet and in particular the Web, where people would publish their own material on their own sites, and technologies like links and search tools would let others find it and navigate around different content.

You're speaking all at once about "true cost of sharing" (what's that, anyways? How much must I pay for sharing what I created? Is this some kind of privilege?)

Yes, in the sense that the infrastructure used to serve your wonderful works of art to others was not created for free. The cost is low when shared between all Internet users, but someone has to pay for it sooner or later. Most of us do so by paying an ISP for access, and perhaps by paying for a domain name or a hosting account somewhere.

Got no money and no marketing skills? Get out and leave true art to people who can pay true cost of sharing!

If you've got no money, how are you accessing the Internet? Does your ISP pay for itself? Was your PC/tablet/whatever free?

Anyone who has the technical competence to get themselves onto the Internet, create a YouTube account, create a video, and get it uploaded for others to see, would also have had the technical competence to run some simple tool that set up a basic site on their personal hosting account and upload the video files to there instead, if the industry had moved in that direction.

These things only seem difficult today because it's not the norm. But if ISPs routinely offered you the chance to buy your own domain and hook it up to your site, and they all came with some sort of mini-dashboard-thing to set up a basic site and upload your photos/videos, people could use those tools just as easily as they use YouTube or Facebook today. It's not as if everyone would have to suddenly become a programmer/sysadmin/HTML guru or something.

You got there when you assumed they are against the law before it was even proven by, you know, the law.

I never made any such assumption. I just suggested that it wasn't unreasonable to hold anyone, including content hosting sites, accountable if they shared material that was in fact infringing. In other words, it's not obvious and self-evident that some sites that are widely used for illegal copyright infringement should be exempted from liability just because the infringing material was uploaded by a third party and happens to be inconvenient or prohibitively expensive for them to audit that material to confirm its legitimacy before they serve it up to large numbers of people down the very big pipes they control.

As for whether this really happens, remember Napster? Or the still-ongoing Viacom vs. YouTube case, for that matter.

Re:Umm ok

[DamnOregonian]

We could just as well have maintained the earlier spirit of the Internet and in particular the Web, where people would publish their own material on their own sites, and technologies like links and search tools would let others find it and navigate around different content.

This made me LOL really hard. Thank you.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The sad thing is, I'm not sure why that should have been funny. We've substituted blink tags and under construction logos for YouTube comments and permanent betas. Is this really progress?

Re:Umm ok

[DamnOregonian]

No- it's not progress in that regard, and I absolutely agree with your idealism. I LOL at its disconnect from reality, though.

I'm a senior network engineer at a regional ISP who runs 5 colocation datacenters and connects approximately 10,000 residential customers, at speeds from DSL to gigabit fiber. We also believe in the earlier spirit of the internet, and as such, we don't limit serving from residential lines or block ports. A significant portion of my life is protecting my network from those people who are serving and infected. In a perfect world where perhaps security had been a basic underpinning of network protocols, that idealism could have come to fruition, but not this one.

Re:Umm ok

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm totally with you on where we are today, and certainly not suggesting we could somehow flip back to everyone serving their own stuff.

But consider what would have happened if ISPs had made more effort to support hosting functions rather than just downloading in the earlier days. Instead of many/most individuals relying on shared hosting sites like YouTube or Flickr or Medium, they could have been setting up their own personal sites using much the same kinds of tools and UIs, just provided by their own personal ISP instead. That ISP could have been collecting some modest extra recurring revenue from a large portion of its customer base for a substantial profit, and the world wouldn't be nearly so dependent on the whims of a handful of mostly privacy-invading, advertising-backed, not-always-so-reliable Internet giants.

Obviously we're too far down that road now to just turn around and go back overnight, but that still doesn't mean it's an unreasonable alternative that we couldn't move back towards more slowly and it still doesn't mean we should give a free past to those hugely profitable Internet giants when it comes to behaviour that would under normal circumstances clearly be against the law, just because it would be very expensive for them to adapt their business models to comply like everyone else.

Re:Bullshit

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

What are you talking about? Nowhere does it say that the licenses have to be free. People could pay the license fee and upload to youtube. GEMA is, however, entirely responsible for claiming they own the music. In many cases, I bet they don't

May be it should say

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We have been ordered by a German court to say that "videos are not available due to a lack of a licensing agreement between YouTube and GEMA"

Re:May be it should say

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Even better would be, GEMA has sued youtube in a German court. That court has ordered us to say, "videos are not available due to a lack of a licensing agreement between YouTube and GEMA"

Re:May be it should say

[squiggleslash]

Or maybe, for maximum bad taste comedic effect, "We have been ordered by a German court to say that "videos are not available due to a lack of a licensing agreement between YouTube and GEMA", and as a mark of our respect to the German legal system, we are only following orders when we show this message to you."

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, so you're saying that its against the law in Germany to mock the courts?

Re:May be it should say

[Sponge Bath]

...your entire legal team and every executive who ever sets foot in a country with an extradition treaty gets 6 months in jail for contempt.

That sounds like a fine ol' solution.

Re:May be it should say

[TheGratefulNet]

if you read that in John Banner's voice, its even funnier.

Re:May be it should say

[marcello_dl]

hm. the nazi reference is not explicit enough. I would not take it to court, OTOH IANAL.

Re:May be it should say

[tlambert]

Oh, and by the way, your entire legal team and every executive who ever sets foot in a country with an extradition treaty gets 6 months in jail for contempt. Have a nice day.

"Germany? What's... Oh, you mean that third world country that decided they didn't want to be on the Internet? ..."

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It's against the law almost everywhere to mock a court, in the sense of obviously not treating a court ruling with due respect. It's usually called contempt of court or something similar, and it's often a gaping loophole in due process that offers disturbingly little protection if you upset a judge and they decide to screw you.

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You think any government in the first world would cut Germany off the Internet because the German courts held someone in contempt for violating the spirit of a court ruling and comparing the courts with the Nazi party? I'd be surprised if you could find a single politician who wanted their name anywhere near that case.

Re: May be it should say

[Kickasso]

Just slide-show the actual court order instead of the video.

Re:May be it should say

[I'm New Around Here]

Is John Banner related to The Hulk?

Re:May be it should say

[orgelspieler]

Yeah, you seriously don't want to mess with a judge. There's no "trial by jury" for contempt of court. One guy spent 14 years in prison for contempt in a divorce case (H. Beatty Chadwick). He would have spent less time had he stolen the money he was accused of hiding from the court.

Re:May be it should say

[Carewolf]

Even better "This video is not available, because FUCK YOU GERMANY".

That is the real reason. Youtube are blocking those videos, not GEMA, and it is fully within Youtube's right not to do business in Germany, but they shouldn't lie and blame anybody but themselves.

Re:May be it should say

[sjames]

I was thinking "Youtube is no longer available in Germany until your courts get more sense."

Re:May be it should say

[imikem]

"You see nothingk. NOTHINGK!"

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Coward]

"bring up the Nazi history."

Which part of that is a direct link to Nazi history? "Only following orders" is used on a seemingly daily basis, whether you take them from the lord of drones, the county sheriff or descendants of a war 70 years past (of which certain war crimes have yet to be proven) is irrelevant and only a fool or a jew would go to such lengths.

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Coward]

How about "Due to a decision of judge <whoever> at the Munich district court, Youtube is not allowed to tell you why this video is unavailable." Then wait for the mob with torches and pitchforks to show up in front of the court.

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Coward]

THAT'S NOT FAAAAIR! If you say that GEMA gets its way with litigation to the detriment of everybody, that paints GEMA in a bad light. The truth is illegal, because of how bad it makes GEMA look!

Re:May be it should say

[tlambert]

You think any government in the first world would cut Germany off the Internet because the German courts held someone in contempt for violating the spirit of a court ruling and comparing the courts with the Nazi party? I'd be surprised if you could find a single politician who wanted their name anywhere near that case.

I think it more likely that various Internet services will voluntarily cease operations in Germany due to legal pressures from German courts.

Effectively, by not reigning in their judiciary, this is the same thing as German voluntarily leaving the Internet, if you can't get to any of the major services or various classes of services which are available in other countries.

One prominent example of this trend is Groveshark, which ceased operations in Germany.

There have been similar recent rumblings about Spotify, which will be resolved in the next year (the deadline is 2015). Without some form of concession to economic reality, such that the amount GEMA is attempting to grab for each instance of playback is less than the net profit to the company providing the service through which the playback occurs, there's zero incentive for companies to continue operations in Germany.

What's the difference, in the limit, between being cut off the Internet by government fiat vs. being cut off the Internet by providers refusing to participate in the German market? With the first, Germany has recourse by treaty with the foreign governments; with the second, Germany is SOL; it's not like a German court can order a service which has no presence in Germany to serve the German market, rather than just ignoring them as economically not worth the trouble.

Picking on Grooveshark until they pack it in, and attempting to extort money from Spotify until they do the same (the likely outcome of the current situation, if GEMA fails to provide a reasonable accommodation by 2015) is one thing; YouTube pulling out because it doesn't make that much money from the German market, or doing it on principle because Google has more money than God, and doesn't actually *need* German revenue, is another.

I expect that if this situation persists, media streaming providers will end up having something like a "GEMA Awareness Week", and Germany will effectively "go black" as far as media, including YouTube, is concerned, for an entire week, and then we can see what the German public thinks about it.

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Just to keep this in perspective, please remember that my caustic comments about locking up executives were in relation to flouting a court ruling and comparing German judges to Nazis, not in relation to objecting to an unrealistic or abusive licensing regime.

I will have no sympathy for GEMA or the wider German government if their apparent belligerence and unreasonable stance on licensing causes reasonable Internet-based media companies to abandon the German market to the detriment of German citizens, nor if the reaction from those citizens hurts those authorities in the bank account and/or ballot box.

Re:May be it should say

[Half-pint HAL]

There have been similar recent rumblings about Spotify, which will be resolved in the next year (the deadline is 2015). Without some form of concession to economic reality, such that the amount GEMA is attempting to grab for each instance of playback is less than the net profit to the company providing the service through which the playback occurs, there's zero incentive for companies to continue operations in Germany.

Or on the flipside, without some form of concession to economic reality, such as paying a reasonable royalty rate, digital services give zero incentive for artists to participate in the service.

I suggest that if Spotify can't afford to pay a decent rate, then the problem is in their model, not their suppliers'. Spotify's problem is either that their subscription fee is too low, or that they're taking too much as the middle man, or both. Spotify's shareholders include Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI, who are also their biggest content providers. For them, low royalties aren't that much of a problem, because it translates to extra profit that they get as capital gains from their shares rather than income from sales/licensing (I understand corporate capital gains are taxed less than profits, the same as with the domestic equivalents). Furthermore, the investment returns are the companies' to keep, whereas the royalties have to be split with the artist.

The Spotify model makes a mockery of the music business's claims to be representing the artists -- as they're no longer bound to percentage commission, they have no incentive to increase the profit for the artist.

I do not know if GEMA's demands are reasonable or not (the reports about the dispute tend to miss that level of detail), but I do feel it's good that someone's willing to make a stand and forego immediate profits in order to maintain the value of their product and protect the incomes of the people they represent.

Or maybe I should just accept "economic reality" and go and work for less than minimum wage...?

Re:May be it should say

[tlambert]

Or on the flipside, without some form of concession to economic reality, such as paying a reasonable royalty rate, digital services give zero incentive for artists to participate in the service.

I suggest that if Spotify can't afford to pay a decent rate, then the problem is in their model, not their suppliers'. Spotify's problem is either that their subscription fee is too low, or that they're taking too much as the middle man, or both. Spotify's shareholders include Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI, who are also their biggest content providers. For them, low royalties aren't that much of a problem, because it translates to extra profit that they get as capital gains from their shares rather than income from sales/licensing (I understand corporate capital gains are taxed less than profits, the same as with the domestic equivalents). Furthermore, the investment returns are the companies' to keep, whereas the royalties have to be split with the artist.

The GEMA model splits the royalties on an apportionment basis related to ratings, which in no way has anything to do with views of a particular artist.

I think I might have little problem with the business model, if the royalties for a particular artists work being streamed were paid specifically to the artist whose work was being streamed, instead of being predominantly paid to artists who had nothing to do with the work in question, and are being apportioned an amount based on the amount of air play they get on the radio, which is in turn tied to GEMA controlling what the radio stations played.

In other words, if me playing some obscure indie band's song got the indie band paid, and no one else, I might be able to live with it, but having half the money going to David Hasslehoff or One Direction or whatever idiotic pap GEMA is trying to sell that week, instead of going to the obscure indie band's pockets kind of pisses me off. A lot.

But assume that that's the case, and they aren't just using all of the other bands to make GEMA and the top 10 playlist that they've dictated to the radio stations richer.

Even were that the case, the economic value of a play on Spotify, which is point-to-point, and only reaches the person playing it, rather than every idiot stuck in their car on the Autobahn, and too lazy to change the station instead of just waiting for the next song to come up instead in no way reaches the economic value of a play to a much larger (semi-captive) audience.

Demanding the same amount per play to a single user as to an entire radio audience for a regional station, of which there are a limited number, is both extortionate and unrealistic.

GEMA wants to protect their historical one-to-many broadcast, controlled playlist, predictable LP/tape/CD sales business model; I can *understand* them wanting this (I want a pony); I can not *support* the idea that we should pervert natural economies in order to *enforce* their old business model remain profitable for them.

Re:May be it should say

[stoatwblr]

"What's the difference, in the limit, between being cut off the Internet by government fiat vs. being cut off the Internet by providers refusing to participate in the German market? With the first, Germany has recourse by treaty with the foreign governments; with the second, Germany is SOL; it's not like a German court can order a service which has no presence in Germany to serve the German market, rather than just ignoring them as economically not worth the trouble."

There are NO treaties governing the supply of Internet across national boundaries. It's ALL done by private businesses.

That's very unlike phone systems, which are all governed by treaties and intercompany contracts which exist between every source/destinaion pair in the world.

If the backbones decided they didn't want to carry german IP traffic anymore, there's nothing anyone in Germany could do to force them to do so (Not that I can see this ever happening. Someone is always willing to carry traffic, else all the spammers and gangs would have been off the net years ago)

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Coward]

It's against the law almost everywhere to mock a court, in the sense of obviously not treating a court ruling with due respect. It's usually called contempt of court or something similar, and it's often a gaping loophole in due process that offers disturbingly little protection if you upset a judge and they decide to screw you.

It's unethical practice of law for judges to treat contempt of court differently than other violations of the law, or to use contempt of court as a tool to infringe fundamental rights. The 9th Amendment (which provides for unspecified rights retained by the people) and the 10th Amendment (which provides for unspecified rights reserved to the people) cause the list of fundamental rights to be open ended.

Amongst the list of rights not explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights, but arising under the 9th Amendment, is right to ethical practice of law. Hence, for a judge to use contempt of court in an inappropriate manner is a violation of the oath the judge has sworn to uphold the Bill of Rights. Such an oath being a precondition for holding office, that judge immediately becomes a private citizen impersonating a government official. For police officers or federal agents to enforce such an illegal ruling is a violation of their oaths as well.

For a government official to place somebody in jail as a result of an illegal action by a judge is indistinguishable from the actions of a private citizen that kidnaps that person. It is not within the authority of government to grant either immunity or pardon for such criminal conduct, as another right retained by the people under the 9th Amendment.

If a reasonable person outside the legal profession is likely to believe that an action a judge has taken is out of line, then that creates a presumption that a violation of rights arising under the 9th Amendment (rights retained by the people) or the 10th Amendment (rights reserved to the people) has occurred.

Legal professionals, as a class in society, being in a position of ethical conflict of interest with respect to recognizing the authority of the 9th Amendment, no legal professional or group of legal professionals can authorize a judge to act in a manner contrary to fundamental rights, in the eyes of the people.

If the legal profession hasn't been recognizing this, then it's time we took back our legal system. The alternative is revolution.

A government of the people, by the people, and for people is a very different entity than a government "of", "by", and "for" the legal professional.

Entrenched corruption, aided and shielded by willing acquiescence of the legal profession, is the greatest threat to freedom in a nation.

Re:May be it should say

[Half-pint HAL]

The GEMA model splits the royalties on an apportionment basis related to ratings, which in no way has anything to do with views of a particular artist.

That is a problem, and it should be dealt with. It is now trivially easy to apportion the royalties, because Spotify have the data. Hopefully the artists will push for this.

Even were that the case, the economic value of a play on Spotify, which is point-to-point, and only reaches the person playing it, rather than every idiot stuck in their car on the Autobahn, and too lazy to change the station instead of just waiting for the next song to come up instead in no way reaches the economic value of a play to a much larger (semi-captive) audience.

Demanding the same amount per play to a single user as to an entire radio audience for a regional station, of which there are a limited number, is both extortionate and unrealistic.

It seems extortionate and unrealistic, right up until you consider that the big difference between radio and Spotify isn't the "one-to-one" vs "one-to-many" part, but the on-demand part. The individual value of a radio play is low because the listener has next-to-no say in the matter.

With Spotify, I choose what I listen to, which makes it immediately more valuable to me. Spotify pays 0.6 cents per play, so let's assume a 100% markup, and that they're receiving 1.2 cents per play on average. Compare with a 99c track from iTunes -- you get 82.5 plays for the price of that, and I have to say there are a lot of CDs in my collection that I haven't played that many times.

Comparing the cost of Spotify to the cost of radio plays is like comparing Blockbuster Video to TV plays. A better comparison would be comparing hiring a VHS tape from Blockbuster against buying the same film. The difference there was not 82.5 times...

Re:May be it should say

[Half-pint HAL]

A little correction to my figures -- Spotify say that they pay out 70% of gross revenue as royalties, which means each play is worth 0.857 of a cent in income. That's a 115th of a 99c track.

Re:May be it should say

[tlambert]

Demanding the same amount per play to a single user as to an entire radio audience for a regional station, of which there are a limited number, is both extortionate and unrealistic.

It seems extortionate and unrealistic, right up until you consider that the big difference between radio and Spotify isn't the "one-to-one" vs "one-to-many" part, but the on-demand part. The individual value of a radio play is low because the listener has next-to-no say in the matter.

With Spotify, I choose what I listen to, which makes it immediately more valuable to me. Spotify pays 0.6 cents per play, so let's assume a 100% markup, and that they're receiving 1.2 cents per play on average. Compare with a 99c track from iTunes -- you get 82.5 plays for the price of that, and I have to say there are a lot of CDs in my collection that I haven't played that many times.

Comparing the cost of Spotify to the cost of radio plays is like comparing Blockbuster Video to TV plays. A better comparison would be comparing hiring a VHS tape from Blockbuster against buying the same film. The difference there was not 82.5 times...

The 75% of Spotify users (15 million out of 20 million) are unpaid (ad supported) users.

For advertising supported users, you can select a genre/"like this artist" playlist, but you can't select the specific song that gets played; so for the 75% of users, the "on demand" that you state is a feature, isn't actually a feature.

For the 25% who subscribe, they can, in fact, elect a specific song. However, does the ability to do this equal a compelling enough reason to bear economic costs above and beyond the subscription costs? For most people, it does not; indeed, we know for a fact that even the subscription costs are not a compelling enough argument for 75% of the user base. And that's a conservative number, based on the premise that the sole benefit they are getting from their subscription fee is totally attributable to the GEMA content, and said content being "on demand", and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the social media, playlist exchange, playlist "permanence", or other features which are services of Spotify, rather than GEMA.

So you should be prepared to reduce your royalty numbers by a factor of 4 relative to the play counts, and then you should further reduce them by explicit song request, to quantify the "on demand" value (as opposed to a straight-through playout of "workout music or some other playlist that happens to contain a particular song).

Again: the economics of the situation are such that the GEMA demands are unreasonable, and for 75% of the users your iTunes analogy falls flat, even assuming that someone got the "full" 82 (or 115) plays out of a particular song to extract their entire side of the proposed value proposition.

PS: I'm pretty sure I have not listened to the Beatles White Album 115 times through yet, and it's arguably one of the better albums ever recorded in the history of music.

Re:May be it should say

[Half-pint HAL]

For the 25% who subscribe, they can, in fact, elect a specific song. However, does the ability to do this equal a compelling enough reason to bear economic costs above and beyond the subscription costs? For most people, it does not; indeed, we know for a fact that even the subscription costs are not a compelling enough argument for 75% of the user base.

Then the business plan is not viable. If a shopkeeper can't charge enough to buy the stock, the shop closes.

Re:May be it should say

[tlambert]

For the 25% who subscribe, they can, in fact, elect a specific song. However, does the ability to do this equal a compelling enough reason to bear economic costs above and beyond the subscription costs? For most people, it does not; indeed, we know for a fact that even the subscription costs are not a compelling enough argument for 75% of the user base.

Then the business plan is not viable. If a shopkeeper can't charge enough to buy the stock, the shop closes.

Thank you! We are in total agreement! GEMA's business plan of charging about what the market will bear for the licensing fees is, indeed, not viable.

Re:May be it should say

[allseason radial]

Yes but at least nobody will see the content without paying. And that is always the end result of greed.

Re:May be it should say

[Half-pint HAL]

Thank you! We are in total agreement! GEMA's business plan of charging about what the market will bear for the licensing fees is, indeed, not viable.

Seriously dude? Is that what this debate has descended to? "I know you are, but what am I?"?

The rental model is supposed to increase the benefit for all parties. If the rental model is not increasing the profits of the producers, it's a bad model. The consumer gets a broader choice and easier access, and typically pays extra for the privilege in the long term, which is how the producer profits. Spotify's model relies on less, less and less. The consumer pays less than elsewhere. The producer gets less than elsewhere. Spotify takes less commission than a retail outlet. The problem with this business model is that the producers' costs haven't decreased.

Secondly, Spotify have two very different products, as you yourself pointed out: music on demand and automatically generated playlists. These two products are of different values, yet Spotify pay the same for them. In essence, they're using the non-paying customers to keep the buy price down for the guys who bring in the cash.

Now imagine if there was a different royalty for on-demand vs algorithmically selected -- what difference does that make?

Well, for now, 100 plays at 0.6 cents gets 60 cents, total. If we double that rate for the premium users and half it for the free users, that's 52.5 cents generated -- a reduction. Double/half again, premium plays give a royalty of 2.4 cents and it's now generating 71.25 cents -- a profit for the producers. Even then, that's still an effective price of 3.4 cents per track to the buyer, which is a very low rental payment. If you double/half again, the royalty becomes 4.8 cents, and the effective price is just under 6.9 cents, a tenth of a low-cost iTunes song. Now you're starting to get into reasonable rental territory, and those same 100 plays, 25 from a premium user and 75 from a free user, generate $1.25, more than double the initial take for the music producers.

Of course, that would mean doubling the subscription price.

So, back to the problem of Spotify's business model... Spotify wants to be "freemium", but the freemium model relies on you owning what you are selling, because you can't give away something that you don't own. They've twisted and contorted the business model multiple times to try to preserve something of the original idea, but it's left them with two different products that they're trying to call one thing, and the lack of profit in the freebie product is interfering with the pricing and profitability of the premium product.

Re:May be it should say

[Anonymous Coward]

If content is not available in a particular country ,people in that country can always look at/listen to that content through a free VPN available through www. hola.com ,circumventing the issue.

The court is right

[mnooning]

With the current wording GEMA looks like the bad guy. What if it read "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because Youtube will not come to agreement with GEMA."? Then youtube would look like the bad guy. "... lack of a licensing agreement between YouTube and GEMA ..." would be neutral.

Re:The court is right

[mysidia]

Youtube has a right to not be neutral. It is their website, and they have the free speech rights to portray GEMA however they like, in their publications.

Re:The court is right

[king neckbeard]

GEMA's stance is batshit crazy. The RIAA and ASCAP go overboard, but GEMA cranks it up to 11.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

by default, GEMA is the bad guy regardless of what message is shown on Youtube.

Re:The court is right

[Applehu Akbar]

This is the EU we're talking about, a country with no specific guarantee of free speech. Britain criminalizes insulting a famous person, while Germany can criminalize insulting a major corporation.

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

...hey have the free speech rights to portray GEMA however they like, in their publications.

Free speech rules only apply in the US. Every place else is up for grabs.

Re:The court is right

[UnknowingFool]

The problem is that YouTube is not the one who has to license with GEMA. That is between the poster and GEMA and YouTube is a third party.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

With the current wording GEMA looks like the bad guy.

GEMA IS the bad guy. Have you tried hosting any kind of event in Germany at all?
If you play any kind of music at all GEMA will automatically assume that you played music by an artist connected to GEMA.
Even if you contact each artist individually and get a written insurance that they are they have the rights to the music and are in no way connected to GEMA you are still screwed if any of their names are even remotely similar to a GEMA member.
The only way to get away is to make a pact with an even worse demon.
You pretty much need to sacrifice ten hipsters on the grave of Steve Jobs and receive the blessing of Hitler in person to get rid of them.

The reason GEMA doesn't have "Do no evil" in their mission statement isn't an oversight.

Re:The court is right

[swillden]

With the current wording GEMA looks like the bad guy.

So... the current wording is correct.

I actually believe copyright law is valuable and has a place, when appropriately balanced, but it's tilted so far in favor of content owners right now, and the record labels and their associations are so abusive, that my starting position is always to assume they're in the wrong.

(Disclaimer: I happen to be a Google engineer, but I don't speak for Google and Google doesn't speak for me. In addition, my opinions on this matter long pre-dated my employment at Google -- in fact they're derived primarily from the year I spent working for Universal Music Group. Based on what I learned there, if you assume in any dispute that the labels are being slimy and abusive, you're basically always right.)

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

"Youtube has a right to not be neutral ... and they have the free speech rights"

"Free speech rules only apply in the US. Every place else is up for grabs."

Just a fucking minute there skippy. I thought corporations weren't people?

It's so hard to keep up with you genuises.

Re:The court is right

[Vintermann]

There is no burden of proof on GEMA, they can demand the takedown of any video, whether it contains something they hold rights to or not. Thus, "it may contain" is the strongest thing Google can say. It is also the undeniable truth that Youtube does not have a license, as such, it's 100% correct that GEMA hasn't granted one. It's true no matter what the demands are on either side.

Youtube has no obligation to paint GEMA in a favorable light, as long as their statements are true. They can say GEMA are evil, unreasonable greedy misers, and it would be perfectly legal free speech (as it should be).

Re:The court is right

[Vintermann]

EU isn't a country, and yes, free speech is protected as a human right. You can insult famous people in Britain all you like, as long as you don't allege something about them which is not true. The problem is how Britain's libel laws favor ligitive rich accusers, but Britain is hardly the only places that favors rich, ligitive bastards.

Re:The court is right

[Sockatume]

Defamation law distinguishes between ostensibly-editorial and ostensibly-factual content, even in the US. The notice is ostensibly factual, and a lot will rest on its accuracy. Ironically if Youtube had made it say "GEMA are a bunch of fat jerks" it would've been perfectly defensible.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Free speech rules only apply in the US. Every place else is up for grabs.

While not strictly false it is a very dishonest thing to say.
Just like in the US Germany has laws that makes political speech free. Just like in the US what can be said is regulated. (They don't have "free speech zones" yet but there still is laws for libel and intimidation and such.)
You are however right in that free speech doesn't exist in Germany. Since they speak German they call it something else.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

GEMA's stance is #@!&. Once you're a member you aren't even allowed to make your own material freely available. Your IP isn't your own any more, it will belong to GEMA and you will be charged with copyright infringement although you're the creator.

GEMA is all about money for GEMA, nothing else.

Re:The court is right

[N1AK]

Youtube has a right to not be neutral. It is their website, and they have the free speech rights to portray GEMA however they like, in their publications.

No they don't. They might, though it is unlikely, be allowed to do that in your little bit of the world but they aren't in Germany; that should have been reasonably obvious from the fact the court just ruled it that way. The world doesn't, in fact, exist purely as you think it should.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

"You pretty much need to sacrifice ten hipsters on the grave of Steve Jobs and receive the blessing of Hitler in person to get rid of them.."

Amen, Bro, Amen. The truly worrying thing, they are not only a monopoly who can charge what they damn well please, they appear also entirely unchecked by regulation - which is strange in a land not entirely short of regulator red-tape otherwise.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It is their website, and they have the free speech rights to portray GEMA however they like, in their publications.

Not if it's defamatory, they don't.

(I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here, just that your blanket statement is obviously untrue.)

Re:The court is right

[radarskiy]

"Free speech rules only apply in the US."

See European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, Title II Article 11 Paragraph 1:
"Article 11
Freedom of expression and information
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold
opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority
and regardless of frontiers."

Re:The court is right

[N1AK]

Youtube has no obligation to paint GEMA in a favorable light, as long as their statements are true. They can say GEMA are evil, unreasonable greedy misers, and it would be perfectly legal free speech (as it should be).

And yet here we are, with a court ruling they can't. Imagine which version of 'legal free speech' I'm going to assume applies a) a court in the country b) a /. poster who disagrees.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Going against common perception, I have to agree. YouTube is an international company that can represent itself with how it decides to handle business. If they were a common carrier or utility, then I could see a government dictating requirements for service, but they aren't and will never be. Large and a household name they may be, but they aren't a government sanctioned monopoly without competition, so if another person or organization, such as GEMA, doesn't like them, they have the right to not do business with them.

I'm honestly starting to think of the German courts as the North Korea of Europe. It feels like they are trying to make as much noise as they can to get attention, or they just have a bludgeon with Google's name on it. Do any of their actions help their citizens or any citizens, or are they simply out to get fines out of the company?

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would an artist even get into bed with them to begin with?

Re:The court is right

[pla]

With the current wording GEMA looks like the bad guy

So "truth" doesn't count as a defense against defamation in Germany?

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I actually believe copyright law is valuable and has a place, when appropriately balanced, but it's tilted so far in favor of content owners right now, and the record labels and their associations are so abusive, that my starting position is always to assume they're in the wrong.

I have a lot of sympathy with that point of view. On the other hand, with on-line copyright infringement, we're also talking about an activity that is ripping off the legal rightsholders left and right, yet which isn't considered a criminal activity in the way that for example theft or fraud would be.

The barriers to cost-effective enforcement as the law was originally envisaged are often prohibitively high in the context of mass distribution over the Internet. Meanwhile, you only have to read Slashdot for five minutes to find plenty of people who will argue that copyright infringement is the equivalent of a victimless crime, followed by various dubious-at-best attempts to rationalise their illegal behaviour.

So, as long as you're going to have laws that say copyright is what it is and works how it works, I don't think it's entirely fair to criticise people in creative industries who try to actually enforce their legal rights in a practical way. They should be penalised in turn when they overstep those rights, of course.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

it's acknowledged but not protected in europe. A right that has a list of exceptions a mile long is not a right; it's a privelege.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Youtube has a right to not be neutral. It is their website, and they have the free speech rights to portray GEMA however they like, in their publications.

IBYNAL (i bet your not a lawyer). IANAL either but I would guess that same free speech claim would make them liable for damages for any infringing video, before they even had a chance to take it down.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

But but... GEMA IS THE BAD GUY damnit!!!

-- Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:The court is right

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Here in the States you will almost never get on the radio, real national concerts, etc without the RIAA. Clearchannel ownes most of the radio stations and concert venues so good luck!

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would an artist even get into bed with them to begin with?

Usually because they don't read the fine print.
Essentially they hear the standard bullshit about "Artists should be paid for their work" not understanding that GEMA has no intention of passing down the money to them.
An even worse part of the thing is that GEMA lacks reading comprehension so if your name is similar to an artist that actually is connected with GEMA they can go after someone you have given permission to play your music.

This is also a problem for projects with a free license. While I haven't seen it for GEMA specifically there have been problems when an artist connected to the French counterpart wanted to contribute to a project.
This doesn't have to be a problem for GNU licensed projects, but they might need to take a fee for distributing the content to cover the license costs.

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

You didn't finish it:

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. and it goes on...

There are no free speech protections while any conditions exist.

Re:The court is right

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

other than Hitler's blessing...sounds like an excellent idea anyway, GEMA or no GEMA! I'll take any excuse to sacrifice ten hipsters!

Re:The court is right

[wvmarle]

Ironically if Youtube had made it say "GEMA are a bunch of fat jerks" it would've been perfectly defensible.

Close.

It should have said something like "we think GEMA are a bunch of fat jerks" to make clear it is an opinion, not a fact, and then it'd be defensible under freedom of expression rights.

The way you state it, it is presented as a fact, in which case GEMA can sue for defamation. Which is exactly what they did in the actual case, as the Google message is presented as a fact, which GEMA thought (and the court agreed with) to be untrue.

Re:The court is right

[jandrese]

Because they have a monopoly on the distribution channels. Unless you want to be a no-name internet band forever, you gotta play the game.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

You can insult famous people in Britain all you like, as long as you don't allege something about them which is not true.

But if you don't want to be successfully sued, even for a true statement, you need to be able to prove what you said is true.

Re:The court is right

[MitchDev]

Germany has a history of wrongdoing. Trying to exterminate the jews and take over the world...
This is nothing to them

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor should the truth should be illegal either. Perhaps their notice should be changed to read something similar to:

Youtube is forbidden by German Courts of delivering this content to your German IP address due to a lack of an agreement by YouTube for the payment of extortion to GEMA.

Guess that would really make the courts there mad though wouldn't it? Makes it sound like the German government is the German MaFIAA's enforcers. Could confuse them with American MAFIAA where their lawyers get to retire to the AG's office.

Re:The court is right

[stoploss]

EU isn't a country, and yes, free speech is protected as a human right. You can insult famous people in Britain all you like, as long as you don't allege something about them which is not true. The problem is how Britain's libel laws favor ligitive rich accusers, but Britain is hardly the only places that favors rich, ligitive bastards.

I think the problem from most people's perspective is that historically the truth was not an affirmative defense against libel in Britain. I know there are many aspects of US culture that have others roll their eyes about, but this is one case where the situation was reversed.

Seems they had a new law go into effect in January, though. The blurb mentions truth as a defense, so perhaps things are improving over there.

Re:The court is right

[bickerdyke]

I wonder if false accusations are legal under "free speech" anywhere?

OK, you have to use a bit of legalese nitpicking to the original statement, but if you watch really closely, the original statement indeed is false.

It says that the GEMA did not GRANT the rights. Which is not correct as in exchange for their legal monopoly the GEMA has, it has the legal duty to grant the rights to anyone. The real problem is that the two partys can't agree on a price.

Re:The court is right

[AmiMoJo]

Note that it is talking about people, not corporations. In Europe corporations are not people.

Re:The court is right

[Ken D]

On the flip side, works coming into the public domain after a limited time of exclusivity, as the law was originally envisaged, isn't happening either.

Copyright wasn't intended to grant corporations an infinite lock on culture (literature, music, art). Copyright isn't working, there's no quid pro quo, so why shouldn't the public just walk away and say "screw this"?

Re:The court is right

[serviscope_minor]

There are no free speech protections while any conditions exist.

Then no free speech exists anywhere.

Try offering money to assisinate the president. When the secret service comes busting down your door, don't forget to tell them how your offer is speech and protected by the first amendment.

When that doesn't work, try it on the judge.

Re:The court is right

[angel'o'sphere]

That is nonsense.
Youtube hosts a video.
I watch the video, hence youtube is the "provider" and liable regarding copyright laws. Who ever it has uploaded ...

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no free speech protections while any conditions exist.

Then why did you bring up the US as an example? The US has only conditional "free" speech.

Re:The court is right

[drinkypoo]

Just keep in mind what you've just implied, that there is no free speech in Germany. This is not news, but it's still a sobering fact. In fact, we already know this to be true. They outlawed talking about neo-nazism, for example, and then declared victory over it. But neo-nazism is still alive and well in Germany. They just pretend it isn't. Likewise, GEMA would like to pretend that they aren't the bad guys. The German courts are set up specifically to permit that sort of thing, for obvious reasons.

Re:The court is right

[drinkypoo]

Then why did you bring up the US as an example? The US has only conditional "free" speech.

On paper, the USA has some of the freest speech in the world. We have the legal (constitutional!) right to record the police, for example, though I get at least one news item a week about someone being arrested for doing just that eventually they are exonerated.

We have lots of jackboots here, but the law is still favorable in this particular area.

Notably, Britain doesn't extend free speech protection to visitors. You can no longer be done for seditious speech as a citizen (unless you're actually planning something) but a visitor can. First among equals? You fuckers read Animal Farm wrong.

Re:The court is right

[drinkypoo]

The problem is that YouTube is not the one who has to license with GEMA. That is between the poster and GEMA and YouTube is a third party.

Intermediate parties regularly secure licensing on behalf of viewers. You're making an irrelevant distinction.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

How about, "Unfortunately, Youtube is not available in Germany because of the threat of fines and legal harassment from GEMA."

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

People have rights - governments have privileges.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed when you use music in your video you will need to license with each local authority for the right to play the music. Even if the music isn't originating from the country, those authorities have sole right of collecting copyright royalties for all music played in that country, which they then need to pay part of to the agency in the country of origin.

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

There are no conditions written into the 1st amendment. All interpretations to the contrary are bogus.

Re:The court is right

[JohnFen]

All the more reason that Google should simply stop doing business in Germany at all.

Re:The court is right

[Sockatume]

Obvious hyperbole and pejoratives are generally taken to be non-factual in these instances.

Re:The court is right

[JohnFen]

So, as long as you're going to have laws that say copyright is what it is and works how it works, I don't think it's entirely fair to criticise people in creative industries who try to actually enforce their legal rights in a practical way. They should be penalised in turn when they overstep those rights, of course.

I think that's totally fair. There are tons and tons of laws that are unjust or that can be used in unjust ways. It's fair (and essential) to criticize anyone who abuses these faults. People and companies should behave in ways that are ethical, not just in ways that are legally permissible. Criticizing them for unethical behavior is fair game.

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

Then no free speech exists anywhere.

That's right. However, the 1st amendment does explicitly enumerate the right to free speech without any conditions. All "legalized" restrictions are in violation.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to use just a tiny bit of English to go "wha?.." to your post.

Let me recap what you say:

a) GEMA grants the rights to anyone as long as they agree on price.
b) They didn't agree on price.

Now, bust open those Logics 101 textbooks and say, which one conclusion follows from these two propositions: "GEMA did grant the rights" or "GEMA didn't grant the rights"?

Re:The court is right

[jez9999]

The problem is how Britain's libel laws favor ligitive rich accusers

Do you mean "litigious"?

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Copyright isn't working, there's no quid pro quo, so why shouldn't the public just walk away and say "screw this"?

Because something about babies, bathwater, and no-one having an alternative plan yet that appears to be as effective at getting new works produced and distributed, I guess.

The main problem we have today is that we essentially have an adversarial system where everyone is pushing for the impractical, one-sided extremes. Basically the only people who are getting really screwed under the current system are the moderate, reasonable ones. The consumers who lose out are the ones who are happy to pay a fair price for something they enjoy, but don't want to then find they can't actually enjoy it because someone's DRM server is down. The creators who lose out are the ones who are willing to offer the product of their hard work for a fair price and without artificial restrictions, but who do need people to actually pay for it instead of assuming they're evil and ripping them off just because they can.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

But now you've jumped to the fact that having copyrights at all is unethical, which is a position many people wouldn't necessarily agree with, even those who oppose the current extremes that the copyright debate has led us to.

Laws are essentially supposed to be a codified set of decisions about what is or isn't acceptable behaviour, hopefully reflecting the consensus of society as a whole, where these kinds of differences of opinion arise. Where this isn't the case, for example because laws have been distorted by media industry lobbying, the correct response is to force a change in the law itself so the media industry can't abuse it, not just to complain when they do.

Re:The court is right

[camperdave]

Try offering money to assisinate the president. When the secret service comes busting down your door, don't forget to tell them how your offer is speech and protected by the first amendment.

That argument might make sense if you were being arrested for speaking. However the charges would be for things like conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, treason, etc.

When that doesn't work, try it on the judge.

Oh, and attempted bribery.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have the whole picture. I publish my own performances of public domain music on youtube (beethoven, etc), so I am a small content owner. The way it works is that I own the performance I create but not the original composition. This is the way it works in the USA, maybe it is different elsewhere. I own 100% of the rights to my content, I even go so far as to only use fonts that are acceptable. And yet I am hit so hard by copy claims that my channel is pretty much shut down. This is not an accident, I believe that it is a deliberate anti-competitive measure used by large labels and content owners to squash the competition. After all in today's technological environment, nearly anyone can produce music at home on a small budget that meets at least a decent quality level (although the skills of professional mixing/mastering artists are obviously lacking in many cases).

So here is how it works, in my experience:

1. I upload my video/performance. 2. The music track gets tagged by youtube's algos as owned by some label or other. 3. I contest the claim, because I own the recording. 4. The claimant has 30 days to respond to my protestation. During this time THEY can monetize MY video, but I cannot. 5. 95% of the time they sit on the claim for the full 30 days, after which the claim is automatically settled in my favor. 5% of the time, after I contact the claimant they remove the claim (yes there ARE good, non-shady labels out there, but they are rare). 6. Sometimes I get to monetize the video, most of the time after the 30 days it gets tagged again as owned by a completely different label. It is not unusual to get two simultaneous claims against a video.

I am really really careful to only use content that I own or have a license for. The end effect is a chilling one. This constant claim-making ensures that small producers like me will have a very difficult time making money on our work. I have had single videos get tagged by eight different labels one after the other. Sometimes you have a monetized video that gets tagged randomly, it could be a video that I had up for years and suddenly BAM someone else now gets the ad revenue for it. How can eight different parties all claim ownership to my content? Its just absurd.

Youtube/google gets their cut either way, so they don't really seem to care. In fact its their algo's causing most of the problem in the first place.

So its not all about piracy, but actually small producers being squeezed out of the system. Some don't even bother to use music anymore because of this. Is it ironic that a site like youtube has been taken over by large corporations?

Anyway, any time my videos get tagged by a claim I just take it down from public viewing until the claim is resolved. I don't mind not making money, but I'll be damned if I am going to let some label earn revenue from my work.

And actually I have pretty much stopped making my videos because of this. It is just too much trouble to deal with.

Re:The court is right

[Calydor]

no-one having an alternative plan yet that appears to be as effective at getting new works produced and distributed, I guess.

Let people who like to make art (paintings, stories, music, whatever) do so because they like to do so without expecting it to let their great-grandchildren live like royalty - that's not what 'royalties' mean.

Culture isn't about mass-producing music that is, essentially, all the same, or producing movies and books that all follow pretty much the same script.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Youtube/google gets their cut either way, so they don't really seem to care. In fact its their algo's causing most of the problem in the first place.

But this is the problem, isn't it? The law didn't require anyone to take down your material under those conditions. It's Google/YouTube's arrangements with the big music labels that caused most of the problem here, and unfortunately as long as you choose to share your work on their service, you're always going to be subject to their whims and probably to them exploiting you for profit because of one-sided terms.

In most places that have safe-harbour style provisions, if you hosted the material on your own system, you would just have to provide contact details where the appropriate formal takedown notice could be sent, and when one of these abusive claims came in you could immediately make a counterclaim and leave your work untouched. Also, these laws typically require claims to be made under penalty of perjury (though sometimes with some weasel words about exactly what is claimed under that penalty that don't help the victims of abusive takedowns) so you might be able to chase after them for fun and/or profit if it's your system they're notifying and not some third party Google (who as you say might not care or want to get involved with that kind of dispute as long as their own legal backside is covered).

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

The word you're looking for is "litigious".

Re:The court is right

[I'm New Around Here]

There is a big condition, spelt out in the very word "speech".

Crying FIRE in a theater is not speech. Talking with co-conspirators about a crime is not speech. Telling your henchmen to kill someone is not speech. They are spoken words, but they are not speech as the First Amendment is talking about.

On another note, the freedom of religion does not allow human sacrifice to appease the gods. Are you against that interpretation as well?

Re:The court is right

[camperdave]

... on-line copyright infringement... isn't considered a criminal activity in the way that for example theft or fraud would be.

Why should it be? With theft or fraud there is a tangible loss. If I copy something, there is no loss.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

By that argument, nowhere in the world has the right to free speech. If you think you have it in the US, consider what would happen if you yelled "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, or made defamatory claims against a celebrity, or threatened to kill the President, or anyone else, or made a misleading public statement as an executive of a publicly traded company, or claimed to be a qualified doctor/lawyer/engineer when not in fact holding the required qualification, or wanted to give classified national security information to Wikileaks or a major national newspaper.

Re:The court is right

[StormReaver]

With the current wording GEMA looks like the bad guy.

Hmmm...let's see:

1) GEMA (presumably) has the legal right to license the music.

2) GEMA has not licensed the music, and ordered Google to remove it.

3) Google removed it, and explained that it has been removed due to 1 and 2 above.

So what part of that is Google's fault? Google explained very factually that the rights owner has not granted Google a license to exhibit the music, and GEMA has a hissy fit. Seems like GEMA is the bad guy. Or at the very least, it seems like GEMA is run by a bunch of emotionally stunted 12 year-olds.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

On paper, the USA has some of the freest speech in the world. We have the legal (constitutional!) right to record the police, for example

On paper the US uses case law. Case law says that the US isn't even close to having some of the freest speech in the world.
You can find one section in the constitution that supports free speech, then a hundred other laws cases that are actually applied that says free speech doesn't exist. You have two set of papers saying different thing and the one claiming free speech isn't followed.

I'm surprised that you bring up the right to record the police as if that shouldn't be taken for granted. I bet you have constitutional right to breath too.

Notably, Britain doesn't extend free speech protection to visitors. You can no longer be done for seditious speech as a citizen (unless you're actually planning something) but a visitor can.

Neither does the US.
You can claim free speech all you want but in some European nations even whistle-blowers are protected.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What about works of practical value that aren't particularly enjoyable to create, but which are nevertheless of great value to society? See: much of the software world, most school textbooks and professional training materials, etc.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Of course, because the cost of creating knowledge works is entirely the near-zero marginal cost of distribution and not dominated by the sometimes multi-million dollar sunk costs of production, and it's absurd that we should have an economic policy that allows amortizing the latter cost over the entire consumer base.

Learn some basic economics, please. Or at least try the instant thought experiment of asking yourself, "If everyone acted in the way I'm arguing causes no loss, would there still be no loss?" If the answer is no, there was a loss, you just dumped it on someone else instead of paying your fair share.

Re:The court is right

[bigpat]

In places where the restrictions on speech are broadly defined and allowed explicitly in the constitution, then there is less room for judicial review because judges are judging the law against whether it reasonably falls under one of the exceptions rather than judging the law against whether it is "abridging the freedom of speech" which is clearly and logically a much higher standard of judicial review.

So for instance a judge in the US would look at a law like "Publicly questioning the integrity of a public official shall be punished by a fine of no more than $500" and ask the question first "Does this abridge freedom of speech?" Where in Germany they might ask first whether this restriction falls under "protection of the reputation or rights of others" or does the law serve "the prevention of disorder".

This exception language is pretty much the same language that the UN adopted under which all manner of despots around the world are claiming to be suppressing speech in the name of public order. Of course the "public order" despots are protecting is the order of keeping themselves and their cronies at the top and the rest of society as their slaves.

Re:The court is right

[DerekLyons]

Try using Nazi symbolism in Germany - and you'll see just how "free" speech is in the EU. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a) Or try to deny the Holocaust in many places in Europe. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial)

Free speech does *not* mean the same thing in the EU as it does in the US, and the EU Charter does not rise to providing the same level of protection as the US Constitution.

Re:The court is right

[davester666]

There is no problem hiring somebody to try to make the President into a sissy.

Now, if you were going for assassinate...

Re:The court is right

[Carewolf]

Hmmm...let's see:

1) GEMA (presumably) has the legal right to license the music.

No, not in most cases.

2) GEMA has not licensed the music, and ordered Google to remove it.

Only in less than 10 cases, the other one million blocked videos have been blocked by Google as collateral punishment.

3) Google removed it, and explained that it has been removed due to 1 and 2 above.

And everything else and then proceded to post a deliberate lie on the videos. A lie that was only taken down in some cases after the real copyright holder after talking to GEMA asked Youtube/Google to stop lying and unblock their content.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL no one cares that you work at google dude

Re:The court is right

[sjames]

So you're saying GEMA DID grant license? No, they did not. Just like BP did not give me a million dollars this morning.

Re:The court is right

[imikem]

I think I'd be all for the human sacrifice, if I get to pick the sacrificees.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

GEMA is the bad guy, along with copyright itself.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

If they try to subvert justice so they can make it easier to enforce their copyrights (like with DMCA takedowns, where courts don't need to be involved), then those people are immoral, and it's perfectly fair to criticize them. The "practical" should never override justice. If they can't enforce copyright in a "practical way," then they should find a new business model, whatever that may be.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

Of course, because the cost of creating knowledge works is entirely the near-zero marginal cost of distribution and not dominated by the sometimes multi-million dollar sunk costs of production

The people who copy the data have *nothing to do with that*. The 'artists' *chose* to spend that money, and no one else.

Learn some basic economics

Maybe you should learn some things about the free market, and learn how copyright is anti-free market. Your precious little government-enforced monopolies that infringe upon private property and free speech rights are immoral and disgusting. If you can't find a workable business model without ordering government thugs to prevent people from distributing certain data, you deserve to go out of business, and no amount of ad hominem attacks ("You'd believe differently if you were in a different situation!", etc.) directed at me will change that simple fact.

Re:The court is right

[bickerdyke]

No. I said they did not refuse to grant a license. They gave a quote based on the current tarif. Youtube declined and now blames gema for not granting a license.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

the original statement indeed is false.

It says that the GEMA did not GRANT the rights

So you're saying GEMA DID grant license?

No. I said they did not refuse to grant a license.

Right. Now just show where the original statement says anything about being refused a license and you'll have a point.

Re:The court is right

[sjames]

Well, gee, I offered them a dime and they said no. That is, they refused. They did NOT grant me a license.

As of right now, they have not granted me a license. I didn't say they refused categorically to ever grant me a license (tomorrow is another day, perhaps I'll offer them a quarter).

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Holy shit. You're the biggest goddamn idiot I've seen all week, congratulations!

Re:The court is right

[tepples]

Meanwhile, you only have to read Slashdot for five minutes to find plenty of people who will argue that copyright infringement is the equivalent of a victimless crime, followed by various dubious-at-best attempts to rationalise their illegal behaviour.

Let me know where I can buy a lawfully made copy of the film Song of the South or the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, and I might leave you alone.

Re:The court is right

[Applehu Akbar]

If the EU isn't a country, then why do Germany and Britain have about the same degree of national autonomy within it as Iowa and Indiana? The only true counties on the continent are the Scandinavian nations and Switzerland, which remain independent and can write their own laws.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The 'artists' *chose* to spend that money, and no one else.

Sure, and they made that choice when the rules said ripping them off and not paying them was illegal. You can't assume they would have made the same choice under other conditions.

Your precious little government-enforced monopolies that infringe upon private property and free speech rights are immoral and disgusting.

If you don't like that part of the economy, you're welcome to spend your life enjoying only things that weren't supported by this kind of immoral and disgusting work. Good luck with that.

While you're sitting in your hut constructed without the aid of modern tools or building methods, reading your favourite amateur author's barely edited books by firelight because you can't use any modern lighting technologies, assuming you have good vision because you won't be able to wear any sort of glasses or contact lenses, you might consider why you think it's not equally immoral and disgusting that you are allowed to claim some of the world's finite natural resources as your own private property and have government thugs to prevent people from coming along and taking it away while you're asleep tonight.

Ultimately, any kind of property, whether physical or intellectual, is just an artificial concept that we as a society choose to recognise and protect because we've concluded that life is better in some way if we do so. You just only seem to like that philosophy when it's to your advantage.

Re:The court is right

[camperdave]

Nice try. The answer is that the producers took a gamble that they could sell enough copies of the work to recoup the production costs and earn some profit. If they can't do that, well, that's their problem. Essentially, they took the loss up front. It's no different than if they produced a flop.

On the other hand, if I can get a product from Supplier 1 for $5, or from Supplier 2 for $50, wouldn't economic theory dictate that I get it from Supplier 1?

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The answer is that the producers took a gamble that they could sell enough copies of the work to recoup the production costs and earn some profit.

Yes, they did, but they chose to play the game according to certain rules agreed in advance.

If they can't do that, well, that's their problem.

Not if they can't do that because you cheated. Then it's your problem, and if it goes to court, you'll lose.

If you don't like those rules (copyright law) then you can seek to change them, and maybe if enough people agree you'll have different rules next time. But then the producers get to decide if they still want to play by your new rules before they commit any time and resources to creating anything else.

On the other hand, if I can get a product from Supplier 1 for $5, or from Supplier 2 for $50, wouldn't economic theory dictate that I get it from Supplier 1?

Yes it would, but that only matters if both suppliers can actually make the same product. If Supplier 1 didn't, and instead stole it off the back of a lorry from Supplier 2 before selling it on to you in turn, then when the police turn up they're going to take the stolen property away and you are the one who's going to be out of pocket.

Re:The court is right

[nurb432]

Well, they ARE the bad guy.

Re:The court is right

[Tom]

No they don't. You are applying american law internationally, which is a bit like saying your wife should be stoned to death because she went out in public without a Burka, which is illegal in Afghanistan.

German law states that your free speech ends where my personality rights begin. You cannot say just about anything without repercussion. If you intentionally lie in order to damage my reputation, that can well be illegal. The legal terms are libel, slander and defamation.

Re:The court is right

[Quila]

German Grundgesetz:

Article 5
(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and fi lms shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honour.

What (1) giveth, (2) taketh away.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

Sure, and they made that choice when the rules said ripping them off and not paying them was illegal. You can't assume they would have made the same choice under other conditions.

That is *irrelevant*. They made the decision on their own, and the people who infringed upon their copyright had nothing to do with it. They inflicted no damage.

If you don't like that part of the economy, you're welcome to spend your life enjoying only things that weren't supported by this kind of immoral and disgusting work.

What good would it do to toss aside all the benefits that you think came along thanks to copyright? That would be as dumb as rejecting a cure for cancer that was created by sacrificing babies after the deed had already taken place. That is, that would be irrational, but that's exactly what you are.

Furthermore, you have *zero* proof that copyright is actually beneficial. To know that it's beneficial, you'd have to be able to peer into an alternate dimension where copyright doesn't exist and our society is otherwise entirely the same. Comparing us to older societies without copyright is nonsensical because they were different in a myriad of other fundamental ways. So, where is your scientific, peer-reviewed evidence that copyright is beneficial? Since it is you defending laws that infringe upon people's liberties--and by default, laws restricting people don't exist--the burden of proof is on you and your entitled friends.

But even if it is beneficial, it would still be intolerable because it infringes upon *real* private property rights and free speech rights. Censorship is, as always, absolutely intolerable, and copyright often employs it as a method of enforcement.

Ultimately, any kind of property, whether physical or intellectual, is just an artificial concept that we as a society choose to recognise and protect because we've concluded that life is better in some way if we do so.

*Real* property is physical and can be used without infringing upon other people's property rights. The problem with imaginary property is that it tries to claim ownership of the bits on my hardware, and that is intolerable, immoral and disgusting.

You just only seem to like that philosophy when it's to your advantage.

Just like people who believe they should be considered entitled to monopolies maintained by government thugs that infringe upon private property and free speech rights and subvert the free market. Such entitlement!

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

They made the decision on their own, and the people who infringed upon their copyright had nothing to do with it.

Of course they did. Laws don't make themselves. They are created by governments, and in democratic countries we all vote for those governments. If the people who want to have everything for free don't like copyright law, they can go vote for the Pirate Party and get it abolished.

What good would it do to toss aside all the benefits that you think came along thanks to copyright? That would be as dumb as rejecting a cure for cancer that was created by sacrificing babies after the deed had already taken place. That is, that would be irrational, but that's exactly what you are.

So the ends justify the means?

Should we also default on all government debt tomorrow? That would save a fortune in the short term, which could be spent on valuable things like healthcare or education instead of servicing loans.

What about negotiating with hostage takers? You get the hostages back, so that's got to be a good deal.

What about when someone facing a serious charge in court is known to be guilty because of evidence that was collected illegally? All evidence should be admissible if it helps us to know who's guilty, I guess.

Sometimes you have to do something you don't like today, because the alternative is having to do something you'll like even less tomorrow.

Furthermore, you have *zero* proof that copyright is actually beneficial.

Of course there is evidence of the benefit. Vast amounts of works are created and shared in our society that were possible because of copyright-backed economics. You can argue about the opportunity cost of our current system and whether another system might be better, but you can't dispute that a lot of stuff gets made and distributed as things stand.

However, if you're going to argue that another system would in fact provide a better economic incentive, promoting the creation or more or better works and their distribution to more people who can enjoy them, then the first thing you have to do is explain why no-one is already doing it. After all, as the creator of a work, you're perfectly entitled to let anyone have it without paying you if you want to, and not to enforce your copyright. Or you could use it to enforce a collaborative arrangement, like the GPL or Creative Commons. Or you could give away recorded performances in order to promote live ones you charge for. Or you could let people choose what, if anything, to pay for your recorded works so if they don't want to pay you anything they don't have to.

All of these things have been tried. There have been few successes, and many of those were for artists who were trying an experiment with new works after already making their name the old-fashioned way. The most promising alternative so far might be crowdsourcing, but even the biggest Kickstarter projects are still two orders of magnitude smaller in budget than the biggest Hollywood movies or AAA games.

*Real* property is physical and can be used without infringing upon other people's property rights.

Says who? That physical property you claim as your own was created from raw materials taken from the world around us, a world that belongs to us all. Why do you have any right to keep them exclusively for yourself? Even if you have possession of something right now, the default natural order of things is that if I have more friends or a bigger weapon I can take it from you and now I have possession of it instead, so why should government thugs protect you from that outcome?

It's ironic that you keep coming back to things like physical property and free markets and objecting to monopolies. The natural conclusion of a truly unregulated free market is often that one dominant supplier wins, and once competition has been eliminated that supplier has a monopoly indefinitely.

Re:The court is right

[swillden]

LOL no one cares that you work at google dude

Lawyers do.

Re:The court is right

[bickerdyke]

But they offered to grant you one and that fact was ignored in Youtubes title card.

And, I already wrote in my first post that there is some nitpicking involved.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

Of course they did. Laws don't make themselves.

You cannot blame the copyright infringers for the decisions that the 'artists' made, is my point.

So the ends justify the means?

No. Once the thing already exists, throwing it away is *useless*.

Of course there is evidence of the benefit. Vast amounts of works are created and shared in our society that were possible because of copyright-backed economics.

You can't assume that it's *because* of our system. Let me quote my post, because you failed to answer in any meaningful way and devolved into meaningless speculation: "Furthermore, you have *zero* proof that copyright is actually beneficial. To know that it's beneficial, you'd have to be able to peer into an alternate dimension where copyright doesn't exist and our society is otherwise entirely the same. Comparing us to older societies without copyright is nonsensical because they were different in a myriad of other fundamental ways. So, where is your scientific, peer-reviewed evidence that copyright is beneficial? Since it is you defending laws that infringe upon people's liberties--and by default, laws restricting people don't exist--the burden of proof is on you and your entitled friends."

Scientific evidence you've presented: None.

Says who?

It seems you fail to understand the free market and real property law. By default, no one owns anything, so it's nonsensical to say that the world belongs to us all.

You can't justify imaginary property; it simply can't be done. Imaginary property and physical property are absolutely different, and if you can't see that, you're insane. I've already explained why, but you didn't bother to respond to that, so neither will I.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

You can't assume that it's *because* of our system.

That is, for all you know, it could actually be harmful. Since you're defending a law, you need evidence. Speculation and ignorance are not evidence. The only way to truly find out would be to get rid of copyright, but since you don't have a scientific mindset, you'll be opposed to that.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Hang on - I thought UK had removed the last criminal laws against libel some years ago.

It's still a civil issue, of course.

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

*Spoken words are not speech*. I'll have to look that up and get back to you on that. In the meantime, until some new evidence pops up, I'll just say that you are nuts, because, as far as I am concerned, all information of the non tangible nature, even when in tangible form, such as print and pictures, can be considered as speech. It has to get physical before it becomes an issue.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The only way to truly find out would be to get rid of copyright, but since you don't have a scientific mindset, you'll be opposed to that.

I'm all for science. I just have little time for someone whose only argument appears to be that no position has any merit unless an experiment he already acknowledged was impossible is conducted.

That works as a scientific principle, when "we simply don't know" is a perfectly acceptable conclusion. However, when you're talking about laws, you have to make some decision. Doing nothing until you have evidence you can never obtain is not an available option, because you can either choose to keep copyright or to get rid of it but you can't write a Heisenlaw. So in the absence of perfect, incontrovertible proof of the correct answer, all you can do is make the best guess you can based on whatever evidence you do have.

It is a fact that right now, today, millions of people are employed in creative industries, producing a higher volume of work than at any time in the history of humanity even controlling for population growth etc.

It is a fact that right now, today, the vast majority of the money that pays those people's salaries comes from selling copies of works that are subject to copyright.

It is a fact that in the recent past, experiments have been tried where works were offered on a choose-your-own-price model, approximating a situation where consumers were not legally compelled by a mechanism such as copyright to pay for them, and that typically the results of those experiments were that very few people contributed at an equal or higher level to the price many consumers pay in a similar context when the work is protected by copyright.

No, this is not a completely robust, 100% scientific, double-blinded, perfectly-controlled, alternative-realitied experiment. It's just the best data we've got today, based on actual facts like how much creative work is produced, where the money that funds that production comes from, and how it seems consumers behave in similar contexts when the copyright restrictions are removed. And on that basis, there's a strong argument in favour of maintaining some form of copyright in law as an economic incentive to support the creation and distribution of new works.

Now, if you've got more than your personal philosophical preferences to put in opposition to that, go ahead. But the argument for the basic principle of copyright is clear, and it's been generally supported by economic and political experts in many places for a long time despite the problems with practical enforcement. So if you want to convince anyone outside the choir you preach to, you'd better bring more than "the burden of proof is entirely on you and you haven't conducted an impossible experiment so I reject anything resembling rational evidence".

Re:The court is right

[sjames]

I was also making a turkey sandwich with swiss cheese and deli mustard when the guy said no. I didn't mention that either.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

I just have little time for someone whose only argument appears to be that no position has any merit unless an experiment he already acknowledged was impossible is conducted.

The experiment could be conducted to a satisfactory degree by ridding ourselves of copyright.

So if you want to convince anyone outside the choir you preach to, you'd better bring more than "the burden of proof is entirely on you and you haven't conducted an impossible experiment so I reject anything resembling rational evidence".

Again, even though your post is so long, you presented *zero* evidence that these things are being made due to copyright, or that the situation would be worse without it. You can't, because to do that to any significant degree, we'd have to get rid of copyright.

Which we should, because laws shouldn't exist without scientific proof that they're beneficial. You're the one trying to restrict people and defend laws that do so, and while I'd reject copyright no matter what, you'd at least be less intolerable if demanded that we have actual proof before we make laws or keep unproven laws on the books.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The experiment could be conducted to a satisfactory degree by ridding ourselves of copyright.

Why do we need to rid ourselves entirely of copyright before we can draw any useful conclusions? As I observed before, there is nothing about copyright law that requires a copyright holder to enforce their rights if some other model for creating and distributing material offers a better incentive. There should be ample evidence, even without changing anything at all, if copyright isn't an effective incentive and other models would do better. Given that the economic damage from removing copyright and then finding that it was actually working as intended could be much greater than the recent global financial crisis, you're still asking for the impossible.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

Why do we need to rid ourselves entirely of copyright before we can draw any useful conclusions?

Because, otherwise, you're relying on baseless speculation and putting restrictions on people without even so much as having a shred of evidence that what you're doing is beneficial.

As I observed before, there is nothing about copyright law that requires a copyright holder to enforce their rights

But they do, and this restricts individuals. We have a culture where copyright is overall considered important. What would happen if there is no copyright to enforce? *That* is the question.

There should be ample evidence

Again, all you have is mere speculation of what the world would be like without copyright; that is wildly unacceptable.

Given that the economic damage from removing copyright and then finding that it was actually working as intended could be much greater than the recent global financial crisis

Justice isn't easy, but that doesn't mean we should give up on it. If all you're concerned about is safety and harm reduction, then you don't belong in any free country, as that mentality is responsible for evil policies/organizations like the TSA, the NSA, DUI checkpoints, stop-and-frisk, constitution-free zones, unfettered border searches, free speech zones, etc. I'm tired of this "Safety above all else" nonsense. Freedom and justice are what's important, and that's why taking such a 'risk' is more than worth it.

Re:The court is right

[UnknowingFool]

So YouTube controls exactly what the user decides to upload? That's nonsense. At best they can remove the video if a copyright holder objects.

Re:The court is right

[UnknowingFool]

But YouTube did upload the video or did someone else? YouTube can at best monitor the videos for content which they do. They can remove videos which they do.

Re:The court is right

[UnknowingFool]

Have you ever heard of the Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA?

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

School textbooks should be in the public domain, anyway. We've seen what happens when companies take charge of this nonsense, and it results in ridiculous book prices. The government should pay experts to write the books and then put them in the public domain. Anything else is immoral, as education is a serious matter.

Software is covered. If someone needs software written, they'll pay someone to do it. And plenty of people already develop software for free, anyway.

Professional training materials? Again, if organizations need those, they'll make them.

The free market is very versatile and has these things figured out already.

Re:The court is right

[camperdave]

I didn't cheat. Downloading is legal in these parts. We pay a levy on media for compensation purposes.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The government should pay experts to write the books and then put them in the public domain.

Would that be the same kinds of government that tend to ignore actual scientific advice on anything politically controversial like drugs or climate change and do their own thing anyway? I'm not sure having that kind of organisation meddling directly in educational materials is such a good idea.

Software is covered. If someone needs software written, they'll pay someone to do it.

Doesn't work. A lot of people benefit from using business software, but no small business could have afforded to pay Microsoft to develop Office on their own. You need a way to share the costs around large numbers of beneficiaries who each contribute only a relatively small amount. That's the major benefit of a system like copyright, when the system works.

And plenty of people already develop software for free, anyway.

The FOSS community and the software it's produced is just about the best example of why a volunteer-driven industry is insufficient. There are very few big success stories with open software development processes compared to the size of the industry as a whole. Where are the FOSS business admin software suites? Where are the FOSS AAA games? Even those open software projects that are successful are frequently just dubious quality clones of products developed with a commercial/closed model, created there's enough of a market to attract a lot of volunteer developers and where saving money and avoiding lock-in are the main motivations rather than any particular technical merit.

I'm not saying all FOSS is like this, of course, but pretending that the overall volume and quality of software produced with the FOSS model is better than the overall volume and quality produced with the traditional closed, commercial, copyright-backed model is just silly.

Professional training materials? Again, if organizations need those, they'll make them.

Same problem. If they had the experience in-house to do that, they wouldn't need to bring in professional training materials from outside experts. And producing good materials is going to be absurdly expensive if a single customer has to pay for it up-front and then either everyone else can just freeload off the back of that hard work or everyone else has to pay again to develop essentially the same work in a horribly inefficient closed system. Split the cost instead and everyone wins.

The free market is very versatile and has these things figured out already.

I disagree. If that were actually true, I'd probably be on your side of the debate, but I don't think the free market has got anywhere near solving these kinds of problems yet.

Re:The court is right

[drinkypoo]

So YouTube controls exactly what the user decides to upload? That's nonsense

It would be nonsense if that is what I had said, which is probably why I didn't say it, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't put stupidity in my mouth. Google is making the information available for download, so Google is responsible for its contents. Period, the end. The user only uploads it, they are not serving the downloads. If Google doesn't want this level of responsibility then they don't need to be in the video hosting business. If Google wants to distribute video files then they're responsible for verifying that they don't violate copyright. Google exercises considerable editorial control over what is posted on their services, which would make them responsible for what it served from their services even if they would otherwise qualify for common carrier status.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

If the EU isn't a country, then why do Germany and Britain have about the same degree of national autonomy within it as Iowa and Indiana? The only true counties on the continent are the Scandinavian nations and Switzerland, which remain independent and can write their own laws.

What the hell is a country anyway? The US is a country made up of 50 states, but the UK is a state made up of 4 countries. Just goes to show that judging one country by another's standards is a fool's errand.

Now, as for questions of autonomy within the US vs within the EU, the EU harmonises laws with one particular goal: to allow free movement of people and of trade. Am I supposed to be annoyed that my country doesn't have the right to have completely different workers' rights laws from (for example) Belgium? Why should I? Now I know roughly what my rights are everywhere, so I can travel for work without being at the mercy of employers who would exploit my ignorance. VAT (sales tax) harmonisation means that I may pay a little more at a certain time on a certain thing than otherwise, but for the most part it levels out and I don't really notice it in the end.

In short, while the EU treaty does cede sovereign power (all international treaties do), it's not actually taking any real power from the people, because we do not have that level of granularity of control over our politicians. What it creates by doing so is something both true capitalists and true communists want: an open market that's a level playing field for all parties.

An important big difference between the EU and the US is the lack of a two-party system. There are very few parties in the EU that exist across borders, and while there are alliances between parties with similar agendas, there is no all-powerful bloc like in most national politics. That means that decisions taken at the European level need to be thought through and discussed, and agreement and compromise established -- no more "win the election, push through all your pet policies as quick as possible".

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Then no free speech exists anywhere.

That's right. However, the 1st amendment does explicitly enumerate the right to free speech without any conditions. All "legalized" restrictions are in violation.

You can argue that restrictions in criminal law are legally incompetent, but you cannot deny someone the right to sue for defamation/slander in a civil court.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Notably, Britain doesn't extend free speech protection to visitors. You can no longer be done for seditious speech as a citizen (unless you're actually planning something) but a visitor can.

If that law says all visitors, it's wrong. A principle of the EU is that citizens of other member states must be treated at least as well as your own citizens -- if it's not a crime for British citizens, it's not a crime for EU citizens.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Perhaps it's just that you don't speak legalese. The WP definition of "Freedom of speech" is "the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them." There is a difference between expressing an idea and coordinating an action. "Put the barrel of the gun against his temple, now flick the safety catch off, now softly squeeze the trigger" is not communicating an "idea" or an "opinion", therefore it is not the abstract "speech" of "freedom of speech". It's conspiracy or incitement, or if the person is completely legally incompetent, it might even be full-blown murder. "Someone should shoot the b*st*rd" is (or at least should be) protected speech in most circumstances.

Re:The court is right

[angel'o'sphere]

No I have not, and I don't see how it should be relevant.

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

They can sue all they want, and the judge should promptly toss it out and fine them for court costs. Libel/slander are nothing but bullshit attempts to silence criticism.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Close, but no cigar. Google is a business, not an individual. Companies outside the US do not typically get granted "human rights", what with not being actual humans. Arguments about neo-naziism and holocaust denial are valid, but completely irrelevant to this case.

Besides, would you consider it free speech if Pepsi ran an advert "Coke causes cancer: Drink Pepsi"? Do you not think it fair and right that such an advert would be banned?

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

"Put the barrel of the gun against his temple, now flick the safety catch off, now softly squeeze the trigger" is not communicating an "idea" or an "opinion", therefore it is not the abstract "speech" of "freedom of speech".

Yes it is. The person with the gun to a man's temple is the sole actor. Only he is responsible. The words do nothing. A person has to act.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

GEMA's stance is #@!&. Once you're a member you aren't even allowed to make your own material freely available. Your IP isn't your own any more, it will belong to GEMA and you will be charged with copyright infringement although you're the creator.

GEMA is all about money for GEMA, nothing else.

One misleading truth, and one untruth. First up, GEMA's exclusivity is not unique -- most collection societies have the same deal; suggesting GEMA is particular in this way is misleading. The collection societies couldn't operate without this exclusivity, because if one of their inspectors walks into a shop and hears one of their artist's songs, he can mark it down. But what if the shopkeeper says "I got a license from Such-and-such Company". Now the collection society has to go back and audit this license, which means extra work (hence expense) over something that they're not getting paid for. If they were to allow parallel licensing, then, their fees would increase dramatically, to the point where it wouldn't be worth it. And then suddenly the artists would be able to license 1001 different ways should they desire, but no-one would be checking that they were getting paid for it, so most people would chance it and use the material without a license, and even if you caught wind of it, building a case would be nigh on impossible.

So while there are undoubtedly problems with the current collection societies, your complaint isn't actually the problem.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Have you ever heard of the Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA?

That's a law designed to prop up a flawed business model: "we can't afford to do it right, so please exempt us from copyright" and many countries have no similar laws... eg Germany.

My argument since the founding of YouTube has always been the same: printers vs publishers vs editors.

Is a printer liable for any damages if they print infringing/defamatory/otherwise-illegal material in a newspaper? No, they're a printer. They get a file and push it through the rollers. They are not expected to read it.

Is a publisher liable? Yes.

Is an editor liable? Yes, he OKed the material.

Is the journalist liable? Of course.

Now, YouTube claims to be a printer, but is it? Well, what's the biggest brand on the site? "YouTube". Have you ever seen a book or a newspaper where the biggest brand on the material is the name of the printer? Of course not -- the publisher could switch printer any time he likes and still come out of it with a product that differs only by one little "printed by/at:" line that no-one ever reads.

So you go to YouTube. It says YouTube in bigger letters than the name of the channel you're viewing. Unless the channel has paid megabucks to get a totally exclusive channel, the suggested videos are not chosen by the channel provider, but by YouTube. The adverts are selected by YouTube. The comments are stored and moderated by YouTube.

They want to have their cake and eat it. They have built a huge brand as the world's biggest and most varied magazine, but when someone challenges their publishing policies they wave their hands in the air crying "we're not a publisher, we're a printer".

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Alternatively, they could strip out the YouTube search engine, the recommendation engine and the ad engine, and leave it to the channel owners to publicise their own videos, generate their own recommendations and organise their own ads. At that point YouTube would be a "dumb channel" and deserving of safe harbor status. Right now, YouTube may not be generating the content, but they're directly responsible for publicising it as well as profiting from it.

Re:The court is right

[david_thornley]

Sure, lots of people like creating things on their own.

Now, suppose you like to write, and you come up with a really good novel. That was fun. Now you've got a neat story.

It may not be spelled correctly. The grammar may be bad in spots. (Or may be generally bad.) It's possible that it contains text that is libelious, which looked like harmless fun to you when writing it. Possibly you misused a trademark (unless you also wish to abolish trademark law). It may be bloated. The 200K words you wrote might make a far better 100K-word story. It needs editing. It isn't hard to find authors whose quality went down when they got too famous to put up with editors. So somebody's got to go over the story in detail and get you to change it in various ways. It won't be fun for you. You thought that particular scene was the best thing you've ever written, but it distracts from the story. You have to kill it. It's less fun for the editor, who gets to pore through the manuscript looking for problems, argue with you about them, and doesn't wind up with anything creative of his or her own. The editor needs to be paid.

There's other other things involved. Making a good eBook isn't as easy as selecting "save as ePub" from Calibre. If you want to release it in dead-tree format (and there's a whole lot of people who either can't or won't read eBooks), there's a lot more hassle. Somebody's got to get paid for all of this.

Other artistic fields have far more business involved with them. You're not going to make a good movie by getting a bunch of people together with whatever they can scare up for props and recording equipment. It's going to take large amounts of money. It's going to involve getting people to go with somebody else's vision, and likely some bruised egos, meaning people who want to walk off in the middle. Sure, there's too many derivative movies, but it takes lots of money to get the different ones.

Not to mention, that was a great story. It entertained a million people when it was completely finished. How about another one? Well, work has gotten more demanding, and you just aren't finding the time or energy. There's lots of us who would pay money to get you to quit your job and write full-time, but not enough to fund a large enough Kickstarter campaign to get you to do that. That would depend on hundreds of thousands of people who'd be happy to pay you for it when they see it available, with good reviews, but who aren't going to commit their money in advance or even seek you out.

Copyright has problems, and some of the ways it's applied really suck. I don't see a good alternative.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Let people who like to make art (paintings, stories, music, whatever) do so because they like to do so without expecting it to let their great-grandchildren live like royalty - that's not what 'royalties' mean.

Culture isn't about mass-producing music that is, essentially, all the same, or producing movies and books that all follow pretty much the same script.

Copyright terms are too long. Agreed. But that does not mean that artists should produce art only "because they like to do so". No-one truly masters an art in their spare time, and being an artist is a full-time job. The abolition of copyright is not the only alternative to over-long copyright terms!

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Nice try. The answer is that the producers took a gamble that they could sell enough copies of the work to recoup the production costs and earn some profit. If they can't do that, well, that's their problem.

Have you had an eyetest lately? I'm worried you may be more than a little short-sighted.

Yes, every piece of intellectual property, whether it's a pharmaceutical compound, a movie or a short story, is a gamble by the producer hoping they can sell enough copies.

Now, let's abolish copyright. Now what are the chances of producing enough copies of the work to recoup the production costs? Zero. Zilch. Nil. Nada. The gamble is gone, and production stops.

I mean, seriously, would anyone go into a bookie's shop and lay down any money if all the odds were 0:1, 0:5, 0:32? Not a chance in hell.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Youtube has no obligation to paint GEMA in a favorable light, as long as their statements are true. They can say GEMA are evil, unreasonable greedy misers, and it would be perfectly legal free speech (as it should be).

Which is why MacDonald's adverts tell you that KFC makes you spotty, and why Apple ads tell you Windows causes cognitive impairment, yes?

Re:The court is right

[david_thornley]

There's a difference between definite knowledge and no shred of evidence. We have fairly strong evidence that some creative works would suffer under a no-copyright regime.

Anonymous Brave Guy already mentioned the "pay-what-you-like" method, and how it generally fails to collect as much money for creative works. More money almost certainly means more creative works.

F/OSS is a good example, as it compares directly to proprietary/closed-source software and shows what can be done without restrictive copyright. Some F/OSS is great, such as Linux and assorted development software. Some is derivative. LibreOffice is very good, but it's basically a copy of pre-ribbon Microsoft Office. Are there similar office suites that take their own direction? I'm not coming up with one. R is a good language, and a F/OSS take on its proprietary predecessor. This doesn't give me good feelings about what would happen in these areas if all software were F/OSS.

And there are areas where F/OSS simply doesn't exist. A lot of business software has no real competition. I'm doing my taxes this year with TurboTax: where's the F/OSS alternative? Where are the blockbuster games? I'd like to drop Microsoft software entirely, but I need it to run software I do want to run.

So, in the most direct fair comparison I know, not having copyright fails to provide economically important things. That's evidence.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

We have fairly strong evidence that some creative works would suffer under a no-copyright regime.

We have zero evidence of what the world would be like without copyright. The only way to find out would be to either get rid of copyright, and peer into an alternate dimension. Look, baseless speculation based on what our system is currently like is not *scientific evidence of anything*.

So, in the most direct fair comparison I know, not having copyright fails to provide economically important things.

It's obvious that you're not very scientific and would rather defend laws without a shred of real evidence.

Re:The court is right

[Applehu Akbar]

Actually the greatest fear of most Americans is that the EU, which began nobly as a small supranational organization unifying a set of autonomous countries as a common trade/foreign policy/defense interface with the rest of the world, is steadily devolving into the US model: a vast, corrupt, all-powerful, sealed-off central government bent on making its member states as insignificant and powerless as possible. Surely, we thought, you had seen our example and would be able to avoid making the same mistakes that we did.

And please, please, don't adopt a two-party system! As soon as you do, all will be lost.

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Libel/slander are nothing but bullshit attempts to silence criticism.

You wouldn't object to me putting up billboards in your neighbourhood calling you a paedophile then...?

Re:The court is right

[Half-pint HAL]

"Put the barrel of the gun against his temple, now flick the safety catch off, now softly squeeze the trigger" is not communicating an "idea" or an "opinion", therefore it is not the abstract "speech" of "freedom of speech".

Yes it is. The person with the gun to a man's temple is the sole actor. Only he is responsible. The words do nothing. A person has to act.

So Hitler isn't in any way responsible for the untold thousands that died in the gas chambers, because he didn't turn the tap? Osama Bin Laden was free of all guilt over the Twin Towers because he wasn't piloting either of the planes?

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand where you are coming from, but at the same time I think what GEMA is asking for is beyond ridiculous and it's not really fair to make it sound like a simple issue that needs to be resolved. If you have party A offering $0.0034 per view and party B asking for $0.0054, then yes you could say it's because both sides are failing to negotiate. But when you have party A offering for $0.0034 per view, which is about the average of other such agreements, then you have party B demanding $0.1700 per view, it's not really fair to say that it's both parties that are at fault.

TL;DR: It's not fair to say they are both equally at fault when one side is being VERY unreasonable.

Re:The court is right

[mysidia]

Yes, but instead they said "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights."

Which seems to be 100% accurate, and is not defamatory.

They don't provide the explanation as to WHY Gema has chosen not to grant the respective rights in an acceptable manner; however, Google is not GEMA's PR department.

Re:The court is right

[mysidia]

But they offered to grant you one and that fact was ignored in Youtubes title card.

Who cares what they offered? The deal was not accepted, therefore, they CHOSE not to grant Google permission after the deal was not accepted.

Maybe I offered you a license, if you will pay me $1,00,00,000 per unique view of the video stream.

You refused? Then you can't say I didn't grant you the rights!

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

No, I would go after the morons that believe you and tried to harm me. They are the problem. You would just be an asshole. See, I have the same right to do the same to you. It all just remains words.. Only the reaction means anything at all, and it is the reaction I will attack.

Re:The court is right

[fustakrakich]

What would Hitler or Bin Laden be if nobody listened? Who the hell do you think made them famous? I mean, besides Madison Avenue. You're barking up a tree without a paddle. You people only want to censor speech because it's easier and more convenient. But attacking the leader only hardens the resolve of the followers. You only create martyrs. You think you silence a voice and you silence the idea, but it doesn't work that way. Another one will come and replace it, again, again, and again. You will always lose and you will be in perpetual war. There always be people like me to tell you to bugger off.

Re:The court is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me refer you to all of the arguments about FOSS. With entertainment there's still plenty of money to be had from live performances, merchandising, etc.

Re:The court is right

[david_thornley]

We have zero evidence of what the world would be like without the Sun, although some people conjecture it would get cold and dark. After all, the only way to find out would be to get rid of the Sun, or peer into an alternate dimension.

Exact same logic as you're using.

Re:The court is right

[gIobaljustin]

We have zero evidence of what the world would be like without the Sun, although some people conjecture it would get cold and dark.

Hey, look! Actual science could tell you that, given what we know about the universe. How about we try real science before creating laws, hm?

Exact same logic as you're using.

And your logic seems to be that the two situations are the same, but they're not. You're assuming that alternate business strategies wouldn't be around without copyright, that free software development is comparable to for-profit software development (though sometimes they overlap).

You're so desperate to 'prove' that copyright is effect even in the complete absence of evidence that that's the case that you're resorting to baseless speculation and calling it fact, and then you attack me by creating ridiculous comparisons that have already been settled with real science, unlike the situation with your precious copyright laws.

Re:The court is right

[Plumpaquatsch]

Yawn. 7 words. No free speech in the US.

Re:The court is right

[Quila]

7 words is what can be said over certain publicly accessible government-licensed airwaves, not what you can say in general. It is a condition the networks accept in return for being granted exclusive right to those frequencies.

Interestingly, the FCC didn't come up with these words. George Carlin did.

Re:The court is right

[Plumpaquatsch]

7 words is what can be said over certain publicly accessible government-licensed airwaves, not what you can say in general. It is a condition the networks accept in return for being granted exclusive right to those frequencies.

Interestingly, the FCC didn't come up with these words. George Carlin did.

IOW either there is no free speech in the USA or there is free speech in Germany or you are a hypocrite.

Re:The court is right

[Quila]

IOW either there is no free speech in the USA or there is free speech in Germany or you are a hypocrite.

Germany has its own words it doesn't allow over LICENSED spectrum, where those who wish to broadcast have VOLUNTARILY agreed to certain terms in order to gain the GOVERNMENT-GRANTED MONOPOLY for that spectrum. Even then, violation isn't a criminal offense. It results in fines for breaking the agreed-upon pact with the government over the granted monopoly.

We are talking about freedom of speech in general. The exceptions in the US are very few and far between, and have been argued to the top where restrictions usually lose. Specifically, prior restraint is extremely difficult for the government to achieve. Criminal charges for expressing an opionion pretty much don't exist.

Now go down on a street corner in France and state your opinion that the Holocaust is just a Jewish fabrication. Dress up in an SS uniform in Germany and preach how they should restore the NSDAP to power. See you in jail, criminal charges for stating your opinion. Meanwhile, attempts at such speech prohibition in America have been declared unconstitutional.

Back to the licensed spectrum, how about a German who advocates Nazis and denies the Holocaust over that spectrum? He gets put in jail. In the US? No problem.

Re:The court is right

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

They outlawed talking about neo-nazism, for example

No, it was good old fashioned Nazism that was outlawed, not the neo kind. And that was outlawed because the USA being among the victors or WWII had it written into (west) German law ("constitution") when that was written.

So it's a bit disingenuous to hear complaints about Germany's lack of free speech from the US, when it was the US that put those restrictions there in the first place. (And that's not to say that the reason for putting those laws on the books was necessarily a bad thing.)

Re:The court is right

[Plumpaquatsch]

IOW either there is no free speech in the USA or there is free speech in Germany or you are a hypocrite.

Germany has its own words it doesn't allow over LICENSED spectrum, where those who wish to broadcast have VOLUNTARILY agreed to certain terms in order to gain the GOVERNMENT-GRANTED MONOPOLY for that spectrum.

Ohh? Name them, or shut the fuck up.

Re:The court is right

[Quila]

Good point, they don't actually do individual words if you want to be technical. Basing on words like we do is practically innocent since individual words that aren't necessarily important to the message and can be worked around.

The Germans base censorship on the content, the intended message of the speaker, which is much more damaging to freedom of speech. Try playing a pro-Nazi song on the radio. You won't just get fined, maybe put in jail. Your license will definitely be in jeopardy.

future without guns & payper currency

[Anonymous Coward]

'nothing to kill or die for.....' something about religion.... http://youtu.be/RwUGSYDKUxU

slashdot only alows....

Re:Bullshit

[RobertLTux]

I am certain that any notice that mentions that GEMA has requested the vid be blocked will not be allowed.

Googles response should be to block any vids (in Germany) that contain any GEMA licensed music (even official channels) with the notice

"This video has been removed due to containing Music Licensed by GEMA"

Draconian GEMA

[SeanDS]

YouTube are right to pass the buck to GEMA. I've been living in Germany for 6 months after having lived in the UK all my life, and only having very rarely seen videos blocked by the UK music industry, almost all of the videos I try to watch on Facebook or similar (usually viral videos) are blocked. GEMA need to get with the times and realise they can't staunchly deny the internet the right to use its clients' music.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[N1AK]

GEMA need to get with the times and realise they can't staunchly deny the internet the right to use its clients' music.

Or Youtube need to stop profiting off providing unlicensed music? I'd have more sympathy for Google if they weren't primarily supporting copyright infringement because they profit from it. If Google were willing to sacrifice all earnings made from adverts shown on pages/videos with unlicensed content then I'd have some reason to believe they were being neutral.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

GEMA need to get with the times and realise they can't staunchly deny the internet the right to use its clients' music.

Why not? The law seems to say they have every right to do that. There are plenty of reasonable arguments for changing laws, but unless and until that happens, "the Internet" doesn't have the automatic right to enjoy others' copyrighted works whenever it feels like it for free.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[SeanDS]

GEMA and their clients benefit from the use of their music on videos on YouTube. While it's not right that Google can strong-arm everyone into accepting too low a price for the licencing (which I guess is why so many videos are blocked in Germany), presumably Google has offered a similar deal to GEMA as it has done to the US, UK and other countries' music bodies, and this has in turn set the baseline. If GEMA are being greedy and asking for more, then they deserve to be made to look bad by YouTube's message.

It's already a stupid idea to make YouTube negotiate royalties with every national body whether an artist is based there or not. Videos are being blocked from US and UK artists in Germany because the German record industry can't negotiate terms. That's silly.

I know I'm making a lot of suppositions here, but I really have very little sympathy for most record companies and their collective bodies.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[Anonymous Coward]

This is same GEMA that effectively stopped schools and kindergartens from singing Christmas Carols - by demanding fees for copying the sheet music. Also technically legal but it went down like a lead balloon: the songs themselves are mostly out of copyright and so a bunch of volunteers transcribed them into a freely usable edition and distributed it to the affected schools/kindergartens. Extra points gained for using open source music typesetting software. The end result was a reduction in the revenue of the conventional music publishers! Facepalm!

Some links (German):
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/stille-kitas-gema-verlangt-geld-fuer-weihnachtslieder/3681786.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Singen-im-Advent-Gema-freie-Weihnachtslieder-1385979.html

Re:Draconian GEMA

[drinkypoo]

GEMA need to get with the times and realise they can't staunchly deny the internet the right to use its clients' music.

Why not?

Besides the technical reasons, which are obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together, they're only going to cause their artists to be left behind because they're reducing their exposure, leading to their own eventual demise.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[lennier1]

Some numbers to put the parent post into perspective:
http://apps.opendatacity.de/ge...

Re:Draconian GEMA

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Good. If they implement naive, consumer-hostile policies and go bust as a result, I have absolutely no sympathy for them. For that matter, if they upset enough people and the law gets changed to remove their entire value proposition, I'd have no sympathy for them then, either. The only thing I'm saying is that as long as the law says what it says, suggesting that it's somehow unfair or unreasonable for people to enforce the rights that law gives them is not a useful argument.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The end result was a reduction in the revenue of the conventional music publishers! Facepalm!

Good. I'm not saying what they're doing is smart, just that they have the legal right to do it unless the law gets changed. If they choose to exercise their legal right to throw themselves off the side of a cliff, that's their problem, not yours or mine.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[N1AK]

I agree with most of your points and I'm certainly not suggesting that GEMA are asking for a reasonable license fee from Youtube; I don't however think that Youtube cares about anything other than maximising revenue and minimising costs and has a business model which benefits heavily from users uploading unlicensed content. I don't think it's fair to say that GEMA not rolling over to whatever terms Youtube decided to offer is somehow being greedy, any more than google refusing to pay GEMA what they asked for is greedy. I also don't have an issue with Germany intervening to ask for more neutral wording, though it does seem a bit trivial.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[Half-pint HAL]

presumably Google has offered a similar deal to GEMA as it has done to the US, UK and other countries' music bodies, and this has in turn set the baseline. If GEMA are being greedy and asking for more, then they deserve to be made to look bad by YouTube's message.

Just because the baseline exists doesn't mean that it's reasonable. If GEMA believes that YouTube would be ripping off the people it represents at that rate, GEMA has a duty to refuse. Your argument is like calling for the abolition of minimum wage laws because some poor sods somewhere in the developing world are worked to death for tuppence a day, and that asking for more than that is "unreasonable".

Re:Draconian GEMA

[Half-pint HAL]

That is the system working as it should. When I was in primary school, most of the music I had for singing lessons or for instrument lessons was either in professionally prepared and published books, or it was handwritten and photocopied. It was the school's decision whether the convenience of the professional books outweighed the cost, or whether they were better off writing it themselves.

Computers have allowed amateurs to get nearer and nearer to professional quality, and this does lead to a natural decline in the publishing industry that they cannot complain about -- free amateur stuff is fair competition to the paid-for professional stuff. But the choice should always be between the free stuff for free, or the paid-for stuff for money. Suggesting the paid-for stuff should be free makes no sense. It should either be paid for, or it should cease to be.

Re:Draconian GEMA

[Half-pint HAL]

Ah, "exposure". For those of us with more than two neurones to rub together, it is patently obvious that using your principle product as publicity collateral leaves you with nothing to sell.

Damage GEMA's reputation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like they even had one to begin with.

Re:Bullshit

[JeffAtl]

Has nothing to do with "giving out licenses for free" - where did you get that?

If anything it gives GEMA the benefit of the doubt that it even owns the content in the first place.

Re:Bullshit

[risom]

No one said they have to licence it for free. The debate between Google and Gema revolves around technicalities of payment. Most other royality collectors agreed to get an undisclosed percentage of advertisement earnings for the licences, but GEMA insists on a flat fee, regardless of amount of viewers etc. of a particular track. AFAIK GEMA is the only royality collector worldwide insisting on that.

Paying

[StripedCow]

But what if I want to pay for those rights?
Where is the option for that?

Oh wait, paying money for content is so "not web 2.0".
I'll just have to live with the fact that my personal information can't pay for everything.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"In May 2010 GEMA sued to have YouTube block certain titles so that they could not be viewed locally." ...

"Trying to remedy the situation, GEMA applied for an injunction to force YouTube to change the messages, claiming that they misrepresent the situation and damage GEMA’s reputation. YouTube alone is responsible for blocking the videos, claiming otherwise is simply false, GEMA argued."

So, wait, what?

Google is right

[hcs_$reboot]

Google is right because the message they display is right - or, at least, is not wrong. GEMA may not like it, and may feel offended, but YouTube is pushing to offer a service that requires users to *not* pay anything. GEMA fights against this, and Google explains that action clearly in their message.

Re:Google is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha! That is so cute! You can't really be that naive, can you? YouTube is pushing for a service that requires YouTube to not have to pay anything, so that all money made off the videos displayed on YouTube belongs to YouTube alone. Try not to be so stupid.

Re:Google is right

[jedidiah]

Why are these videos blocked? Are they being blocked at the request of GEMA? If so then it's entirely on GEMA. They just aren't man enough or honest enough to stand behind their decision. The fact that a judge is willing to side with them on this nonsense is just appalling.

Re:Google is right

[thaylin]

First of all you are incorrect. They are willing to pay, not just a flat fee that may be more than what uses generate, they want a better percentage fee that can go up and down. Do try to learn to read.

In addition GEMA is the one forcing youtube to block the videos, therefore the statement is 100% accurate.

Re:Google is right

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am sleeping in the cold tonight because when I enetered jedidiah's house he threatened to call the cops. Therefore it is ENTIRELY on jedidiah that I have nowhere to sleep". Sounds pretty fucking stupid, doesn't it?

Re:Google is right

[N1AK]

No they aren't. GEMA is asking Youtube for money to license the content and Youtube won't pay it so THEY remove the content instead. GEMA isn't asking that the video is blocked, and would much prefer that they got paid instead. Now we can debate if the fee GEMA wants is reasonable, but it isn't them asking for it to be taken down.

Re:Google is right

[Anonymous Coward]

And YouTube's message isn't saying GEMA is asking the video to be blocked, they say that "GEMA has not granted the respective music rights", which is purely factual.

Re:Google is right

[sjames]

So the screen should read "We can't show this video to you untill GEMA makes a more reasonable licensing demand"?

Re:Google is right

[Half-pint HAL]

Except most of the material isn't even GEMA's to license, and they have not asked for it to be blocked. It looks for all the world like Google are playing a nasty, nasty game. Lots and lots of collateral damage and pointing to someone else to blame. "Sorry I blew up your house, but it was GEMA -- they asked us to exterminate a rat that was in it."

Re:Google is right

[sjames]

Many of those ARE GEMAs to license in Germany. It is not uncommon to grant excluive rights country by country.

It's not unknown for GEMA to demand payment for things they certainly don't have any rights or interest in, and it can be very expensive to fight it. In those cases, more reasonable = recognizing that it's not theirs.

Re:Google is right

[Half-pint HAL]

If you follow the case more closely, you'll find that people have been finding their material blocked and contacting GEMA, saying "this isn't under your license, what the hell are you playing at?" and they've responded that "we never asked for this material to be blocked -- speak to Google."

Re:Google is right

[sjames]

Of course they didn't ask for it to be 'blocked' They asked for money.

Technically youtube chose to block it, but that's because they had the choices of: pay, block, or get sued. Big surprise, they didn't choose pay or get sued.

If youtube was actually claiming GEMA made them do it when GEMA hadn't said anything about it, that would have been in the lawsuit.

Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube should just not serve content to Germany. Problem solved.

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I would honestly like to see this.

Also, in the UK.

Since they have a hard-on for censorship, and continually tell Google how to run their shit. And Google owns YouTube, so...

Re:Bullshit

[UnknowingFool]

Who says anything about "free"? Like all copyrights, the owner must grant permission for the material to be used. The person who posted the video may not have had rights to GEMA's music and thus GEMA filed a notice to remove the video. Period. It seems to me that GEMA is so sensitive about them being identified as the complainant.

"more appropriate"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Changing the message to state that videos are not available due to a lack of a licensing agreement between YouTube and GEMA would be more appropriate, the Court said."

Key words: "more appropriate"
Which means that current message is also appropriate. /thread

Re:"more appropriate"

[Immerman]

Not raping, pillaging, and burning is more honorable behavior for invading soldiers. Agree?

That doesn't imply that raping is honorable. Doesn't even imply that it's possible to be a truly honorable invading soldier. Just that on a spectrum from "bastion of honor" to "honorless slime", raping and pillaging makes you less honorable.

Re:"more appropriate"

[Valdrax]

Key words: "more appropriate"
Which means that current message is also appropriate. /thread

Nope. An elephant being bigger than a flea doesn't make the flea big.

Re:"more appropriate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not raping, pillaging, and burning is more honorable behavior for invading soldiers. Agree?

No. I'm a viking!

Re:"more appropriate"

[Immerman]

Ah, well then, pretend I said giving your victims a chance to meet you in open combat and perhaps win entry to Valhalla through their valor rather than killing them in their sleep and sentencing them to an eternity in Niflheim.

Extortion... neat.

[DeTech]

I would have it say, "Videos are not available due to GEMA’s unreasonable demand for €0.12 per view of videos which may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights."

Re:Extortion... neat.

[Immerman]

Now, now, "unreasonable" is clearly a biased word. Just stick to the facts and let people reach the obvious conclusion on their own.

Re:Extortion... neat.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Click here to pay GEMA â0.12 to view the video that may or may not contain GEMA Licensed music."

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

in the rest of the world youtube and right holders seems to get along sorta kinda ok, putting the blame on GEMA seems to be the obvious conclusion

and by "may contain music" they really mean "a car drove by that might have a radio that could have been tuned into a radiostation that could possibly have been playing part of something that kinda sounds like GEMA music"

We all gotta remember

[fustakrakich]

There's no free speech protections in Europe, or technically anywhere outside the US, who are the only ones where the statute says no law. Of course it's also the place where the Supreme Court says, fuck that, in its fanciful interpretations of the explicitly written law.

Re:We all gotta remember

[Anonymous Coward]

> There's no free speech protections in Europe,

In the UK we call it "Freedom Of Expression" instead. Before 1998 it was a negative right under common law. Post it was written into law under the "Human Rights Act". This was brought in as part of the European Convention on Human Rights. The ensure all EU citizens have "the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises" (Wikipedia.)

Re:We all gotta remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, you yanks are so cute in your delusions. Do read up on the scandinavian countries and their constitutional protections of speech and similar.

On top of that, there is a huge difference between the law and actual reality. Which country is it that bleeps and blurs on TV, eh?
Country of the free, indeed. Free to be sued for any little shitty thing that somebody can think of.

Re:We all gotta remember

[TangoMargarine]

I have not been shown any evidence of absolute constitutional guarantee of free speech outside the U.S., ergo no speech protection whatsoever can exist anywhere except the U.S.

FTFY. There are maybe 196 sovereign nations in the world. I am sure that at least one of them somewhere has some amount of free speech protection.

(Don't make huge blanket statements that are trivial to disprove. It makes you look like an idiot.)

Re:We all gotta remember

[fustakrakich]

:-) How you transmutilated what I said into that, I'll never know. I'll have to assume English is not your native language.

Re:We all gotta remember

[TangoMargarine]

I translated your weasel words into straightforward language, which incidentally revealed that what you were saying was total crap. And yes, English is my first language.

Re:We all gotta remember

[fustakrakich]

You did nothing of the kind. Not even close, but I guess you win the internets. I have no use arguing with people who lack basic comprehension.

Re:We all gotta remember

[TangoMargarine]

If you wanted to say that other countries don't guarantee completely free speech, you should have just said so. As it is, your original comment is unambiguously and demonstrably false as I can guarantee you at least one other country has some sort of law regarding not being arrested for saying some kind of thing they don't like. I don't even need to actually look because it's so obvious. Hell, even in the U.S. free speech is qualified (yelling fire in a movie theater).

Either you were talking about other countries not having an absolute constitutional guarantee of free speech (which may be a fair point, although I bet France has some language in there concerning free speech), or you were talking about gradations of "free" that I argue even the U.S. has.

You saying I lack reading comprehension is a blatant case of the pot calling the (non-black) kettle black.

Royalty collection?

[Sockatume]

Is that one of those agencies that claims a blanket right to, and gathers licencing fees for, the works of every single person working in a particular field? Whether they're a royalty-receiving member or not?

Re:Royalty collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Royalty collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. That's one of those.

Re:Royalty collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. You have to prove the music you're playing is not covered by the GEMA.

Good luck with that one.

Re:Royalty collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some collction agancys are appointed by laws one of them is Copyswede.

Re:Royalty collection?

[kthreadd]

I believe that you're wrong there. The law doesn't specify an organization at all, only that organizations representing large a number of Swedish authors have the right to demand compensation. You could create a competitor to Copyswede if you wanted.

Re:Royalty collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. With really nice gems such as: If you're playing music at an event and you can't prove that every single song you played was by an artist who's not signed with them, you gotta pay the GEMA for all the songs even if 99% of them are free. :D

Re:Royalty collection?

[jeti]

Not quite. The GEMA only collects fees for its members. The problem is the GEMA assumption. If you play a song, you either have to pay the GEMA or document that the relevant artists do not have GEMA contracts (which is either a pain or plain impossible).

Re:Royalty collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the netherlands the law actually specifies the entity which is allowed the collect royalty. We have a few organisation each collects for the same songs, but in different ways that they are played.

As an person who writes music you have to explicitly opt-out of royalty collection. The copyright notice should read something like, 'the copyright on this music is self-managed'. If you don't and you play your own music somewhere, you will have to pay these collection agencies.

Re:Royalty collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that you're wrong there. The law doesn't specify an organization at all, only that organizations representing large a number of Swedish authors have the right to demand compensation. You could create a competitor to Copyswede if you wanted.

No you can't. The law you are talking about is the one that applies to STIM. You can create a competitor to STIM if you want to and some artists have already done that and created SOMS when they got fed up with STIM.

Copyswede on the other hand is specifically mentioned in the law regarding blank media and while you can create a competitor you have no right to gather provisions and the companies selling blank media will still have to pay Copyswede and can just ignore you.

Re:Royalty collection?

[Anonymous Coward]

But currently there is only one organization in Germany collecting reyalties for music and this it the GEMA:
An alternative organization C3S has been founded to get rid of the "GEMA-Vermutung" (i.e. the argument used by the GEMA to collect money without checking if they represent the musician in question) but they are not yet operational.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Their current statement is in no way neutral. It implies that GEMA is entirely responsible for not giving out licenses to their content for free, and that YouTube/the video's author have no responsibility to pay for music at all.

I was about to post something similar to this. Saying that the video is blocked because GEMA hasn't granted the relevant right puts the blame at GEMAs door, when the reality is that the person responsible for uploading the video hasn't actually asked GEMA for a licence. The onus is on the uploader to ask GEMA for a licence, not on GEMA to seek out people using material they're in charge of and then give them a licence. Saying that GEMA "hasn't granted the rights" implies that they were asked to do so, which almost certainly isn't the case.

It's practically saying that GEMA has refused to allow the material to be shown without actually asking them if they would allow it first. You can't blame somebody for not doing something you didn't ask them to do.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

> Any person using FTFY or editing my postings gets a US$50.00 gift.

FTFY

Cool. When do I get my money!

Re:"Seems pretty neutral"

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems neutral to me. everyone knows you have to pay for the right. so the statement to me reads "we cant show this because the owners request a payment we do not agree to pay" it does not in any way say who is the bad guy (and they are only bad if you are in the "taking money for your services" are bad boat - they (GEMA) seem to think doing so makes them look bad - reality hurts i guess), only that an offer was made by GEMA and not accepted by FB. End of story. And if GEMA are the owners prohibiting showing the videos, they should ofcourse be named in the reason for not showing it. even if it is ultimately facebook being asses.

Creepy

[Sponge Bath]

Forcing a company to do something and then forbidding mention that force was applied? That reminds me of the US government.

Re:Creepy

[Sique]

No, forcing a company to do something and then not being smug about it.

Re:Creepy

[JohnFen]

That's just as creepy.

Re:Creepy

[Sique]

It's called "contempt of the court" and is as penalized in the U.S..

FUCK GEMA.

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously - among other things blocked *by GEMA*, the only Ukranian news channel still functioning during the recent unrest. And thats on top of their recent attempt to more or less single-handedly bankrupt every nichtclub in German with their fucking ludicrous extortion demands - Cosa Nostra has nout on these boys.

If GEMA are getting a bad press, they fucking well deserve it, and no, nor would I cave into their extortion were I you tube either. Somebody, somewhere, has to draw a line in the sand, finally, with these greedy, near-useless leeches and their never ending and entirely unchecked by regulation or sense demands.

GEMA, die already, please.

 

Re:FUCK GEMA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did this "news channel" at any point play music, or had the potential to play music? Then they should have obtained a license before infringing.

Re:FUCK GEMA.

[Anonymous Coward]

..yeah, and how are they supposed to do that? The news channel was blocked as part of GEMAs general disagreement with you tube over German terrority licensing, licensing had nothing to do with them as such. The fact that GEMA can blanket block the only functional news channel to a population of 82 million people, this from a neighbouring land in a time of near civil war, probably because they once had an item that ran three bars of Happy Birthday, or some BS - This, sorry, tells you everything you need to know about the ridiculousness (and even danger) of GEMAs monopoly abuse.

Well played, GEMA. Sad day, when even Sony has to tell you to get your head out of your erse, not that you will listen to them any either.

Re:FUCK GEMA.

[Anonymous Coward]

..and that they should be blocked "if they had the potential to play music.."

- WTF, sorry, I never released I was actually talking to a GEMA employee ;) Congratulations on your stunning home-court victory as well, BTW, nobody thinks you are a (potential) shower of greedy a*holes that should be regulated into the 21st century (and preferbaly out of your comfortable monopoly existence) at all now, honestly, really.

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Non-compliance with the order could result in fines of €250,000 per infraction.

So, greedy GEMA is looking for new ways to gain money.

Re:Hmm...

[MitchDev]

Unless they do things way different, wouldn't the fine for defying the German courts go to the German court system, not the Goddamn Evil Motherfuckers Association?

Damage GEMA's reputation?

[Anonymous Coward]

No worries: those GEMA morons do an incredibly good job of that themselves!

Something's not right here.

[astro]

I'm an American who lives in Germany, and this all doesn't add up - practically all of the YouTube content that I want to see see that instead has this GEMA message is AMERICAN content. GEMA certainly doesn't own the rights to much, if any of it. I've always had the understanding that somehow German agencies haven't paid the American fees to play licensed content, or something. It's an entirely different message if I want to watch, say, Swiss content that also is not properly licensed here.

Re:Something's not right here.

[kthreadd]

They don't own it but they have most likely licensed it for your region. That's unfortunately how the music business work. Content is created somewhere, then licensed to other companies around the world and they in turn handle local distribution.

Re:Something's not right here.

[Dynedain]

You're right. They don't own it, but they are licensed to be the royalty collection entity in Germany. You'll find the member organizations to be the same or a cross-section of ASCAP members in the USA.

In the USA, music royalties are collected and distributed back to publishers and/or artists by ASCAP or BMI. In Germany, it's GEMA. In just about every country in the world, it's a different royalty collection process and licensing entity, just like it's a different copyright and distribution process.

This is the fundamental reason why music and video content has been so problematic in the era of the truly global internet. There are billions upon billions of dollars invested in the archaic business models, contracts, organizational infrastructure, and jobs to support the legacy model of content consumption that had been built up over nearly a century. The internet came along and destroyed it all in about a 5 year span.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

GEMA is, however, entirely responsible for claiming they own the music. In many cases, I bet they don't

If I were a betting man, I'd take that bet without hesitation.

Of course there are cases where industry bodies have been overly aggressive in going after people who they erroneously claimed were infringing their rights. And of course they've sometimes done that based on naive, automated detection systems. And of course they should be penalised appropriately and make good any harm done.

None of that means the overwhelming majority of people they go after aren't blatantly infringing their legal rights for real.

Re:"Seems pretty neutral"

[UnknowingFool]

How about "This video is available in other countries besides Germany because the copyright holders in those countries are more reasonable than GEMA has been"? Does it say something that other music companies are calling out GEMA:

Edgar Berger, CEO of Sony Music Entertainment in Munich, told Billboard:

“I suspect that some members of GEMA’s supervisory board have not yet arrived in the digital era. We want to see streaming services like VEVO and Spotify in the German market. Spotify must not be blocked by GEMA any longer. Artists and music companies are losing sales in the millions”.

A few little fixes here and there...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Due to GEMA requirements of a €0.12 licensing fee per view per video containing or not containing GEMA intellectual properties, this video cannot be made available."

That seems legaloid enough.

East Texas?

[Type44Q]

Munich: the "Texas Eastern District Court" of Europe.

Re:East Texas?

[Anonymous Coward]

Munich: the "Texas Eastern District Court" of Europe.

Nuke it, it's the only way to be sure.
Oh btw fuck beta and fuck germany.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you two should start the school from the 1st grade.

Neutral is in the eye of the beholder

[Overzeetop]

Neutral is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, the statement is entirely factual. GEMA has, in fact, NOT granted the rights. It is actually the youtube poster who is required to obtain (what I assume is the German equivalent of) synchronization rights in order to post the video. Youtube has found it in their commercial interest to secure those rights in the video poster's stead where they can. However, the right - BECAUSE IT IS NOT STATUTORY* - is solely at the whim of GEMA. Youtube may have offered them less than they wanted, or less than they felt was fair compensation. It doesn't matter - GEMA grants or does not grant; it is not Youtube has no say in the rights granting process. Youtube could offer them $100 per play, and GEMA could still say no, because is their right.

*I presume that US and German copyright law is similar; if it is statutory then the above is not as compelling. Note that in the US, some broadcast and all mechanical licensing IS statutory, and rights holders have no say, but synchronization (video rights) is different.

Re:Welllll

[Sique]

It was me just a few minutes ago. Nothing happened.

Re:Bullshit

[Artraze]

YouTube doesn't block videos in the US containing copyrighted music. Instead, it adds ads to the video and a little "buy it on iTunes" (or whatever) link. I'd presume that some of the ad dollars are kicked back to the MPAA or other relevant racket organization in addition to the free advertising 'buy' link as payment use of the music.

Given that apparently Grooveshark pulled out of Germany because of GEMA's fees, I imagine that YouTube is encountering the same issue: GEMA wants too much money per view than YouTube can afford to pay. (About 25 cents/view, I gather.)

Would you rather they say "YouTube can't afford to pay GEMA for"? It still doesn't make GEMA look good. Honestly, I think that makes GEMA look even worse. After all, if you do take "grant" to mean "for free", people can still think that it's reasonable (if annoying) for GEMA to not give YouTube their music. Saying "can't afford" makes GEMA look like, frankly, the extortionists they are.

The problem GEMA has, in reality, is that people like YouTube and don't like them and other IP barons. And even worse for them, YouTube seems to have come up with some form of agreement with nearly all the rest of their counterparts. Thus, in a case of YouTube vs GEMA, GEMA will always look bad because that's the bias people are starting with. Even if you just say "YouTube couldn't come to an agreement with GEMA" what's the reaction? "GEMA sucks; why can't they work something out."

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

"..because it _may_ contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights" -> that says it all, really. The content doesn't *have to be proven* to infringe, merely all GEMA needs to do is make an unproven claim and voila!

I do not own the copyright blah blah

[Bazman]

So are those "No copyright in this it is a fair use" messages I see on youtube not legally enforceable? I mean, I'm only listening to this whole album for criticism... Sheesh! Whoodathunkit.

Re:Bullshit

[allcoolnameswheretak]

The statement is not complete. The entire YouTube statement is as follows:

"Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights.

We're sorry."

Followed by a large "uncertain" smiley face in the middle of the video: :/

So in it's entirety it does raise the initial impression that YouTube is good and understanding whereas GEMA is the evil empire. The reality probably lies somewhere in between.

Re:Bullshit

[wes33]

how do you get from

"in many cases"

to

"overwhelming majority"

this is the straw man fallacy, classic case

Block youtube in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

I think youtube should block viewing in Germany for a few days, posting on their site that they haven't been able to reach an agreement with GEMA, and to complain to GEMA about it.. The public backlash to GEMA would definitely stir things up.

Re:Block youtube in Germany

[MitchDev]

I dunno, considering GEMA's whining in this case, the German courts will probably sentence YouTube to the gas chamber if they did that...

But I like your idea +20 points

Just tweak the wording a bit

[WWJohnBrowningDo]

Saying "I will kill the president" is illegal, but saying "Remember kids, saying 'I will kill the president' is illegal!" is legal.

Google should just change the message to:

Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany.

By the way, some pricks have a problem with us displaying the message "this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights."
 
So we're definitely not going display that message.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you just say "YouTube couldn't come to an agreement with GEMA" what's the reaction? "GEMA sucks; why can't they work something out."

As someone who has dealt with GEMA before I have to say that of everything that has come from Germany GEMA is probably the least sympathetic. They are even worse than their French counterpart.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I didn't. Those were opposite sides of the argument. I'm suggesting that the overwhelming majority of people they go after probably are infringing and thus, legally speaking, legitimate targets. That contradicts the position that in many of those cases they don't have the rights they claim to have, unless you want to interpret "many" according to some absolute, small scale without reference to the overall situation.

Google should just shutdown Youtube in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

And post a message stating "Due to a dispute with the German courts and GEMA, it is no longer in Youtube's best interest to be available in Germany"

See how people like that.

Re:Google should just shutdown Youtube in Germany

[MitchDev]

I like this one even better

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that the video is blocked because GEMA hasn't granted the relevant right puts the blame at GEMAs door,

Where it belongs.

Saying that GEMA "hasn't granted the rights" implies that they were asked to do so

No, that is ridiculous. 'GEMA has refused to grant the rights' would imply they were asked to do so.

Re:Bullshit

[wvmarle]

"This video has been removed due to containing Music Licensed by GEMA"

That statement is false, and should never be used for a blocking notice. Blocking is done automatically without anyone verifying it really contains infringing music. It is also NOT licensed by GEMA, which is the whole point of the issue, that licensing agreement is not there.

Drop the sound

[grahamm]

Rather than completely blocking the video, what was wrong with what YouTube used to do - show the video with no sound track?

German courts

[korbulon]

Making US courts seem like paragons of justice since 1934.

Re:German courts

[drinkypoo]

They had to come up with a legal framework that would permit them to absolve important war criminals of responsibility so that they could utilize them in ways other than breaking rocks.

Kind of like how the USA has a legal framework that permits corporations to rape us all daily

Re:German courts

[korbulon]

Kind of like how the USA has a legal framework that permits corporations to rape us all daily

Yes, but in the eyes of many US polticians this is "legitimate rape."

Re:German courts

[drinkypoo]

Yes, but in the eyes of many US polticians this is "legitimate rape."

Yeah, naturally. Because otherwise the system has mechanisms to shut itself down.

Re:German courts

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! Those war criminals were exported to the US to build rocket programs. The rest were retroactively punished, that is the Holocaust was "legal" in Germany and the court apparently heard such a defense as well. The opposite what you described happened.

US company in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why Google even has to deal with GEMA and German courts. Google is an American company. They may have a local branch, but that branch is certainly not operating YouTube.

FUCK GEMA!

[MitchDev]

That is all

Re:Bullshit

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

GEMA doesn't file notices at all. The ContentID system does it all automatically. Problem is the ContentID system has no way of knowing if something is infringing or not.

Re:Bullshit

[jandrese]

So the message should read: "This video has been removed due to containing music that GEMA will not license." ?

Do you have a larynx and lungs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should obtain a license from GEMA in case you have at any point sang a song, or have a potential to sing one.

Re:Bullshit

[jandrese]

YouTube doesn't block videos in the US containing copyrighted music

LOLWAT? Youtube takes down thousands of videos per day from automated music recognition bots run by the cartels. Hint: If you post a video of your kid doing something, make sure there is no radio playing in the background.

Re:Bullshit

[thaylin]

Many is subjective, you assumed that the author meant many as in most, which then he would have probably used most and not many. Many people use the word many to describe something between 10% and 49%.

Re:Bullshit

[Arancaytar]

Licensed by GEMA

Owned and not licensed by GEMA (at least to Google); that's the problem.

Re:Bullshit

[thaylin]

The licensed part is referring to between GEMA and the author of the music, not Youtube or the uploader and GEMA.

Re:Bullshit

[wvmarle]

At least something like "we think that it contained music", as no-one verified that it really is an infringing track. That's part of the issue with your message.

And it's also not "will not license" as GEMA has made an offer to license it to YouTube, and presumably YouTube made a counter offer, and for whatever reason they can not agree to the licensing terms. So "YouTube will not license" would be as true as "GEMA will not license".

Re:Bullshit

[Kjella]

I am certain that any notice that mentions that GEMA has requested the vid be blocked will not be allowed.

Which is pretty much what they were complaining about. YouTube has blocked the video because they fear - usually quite correctly - that it contains music which GEMA hasn't granted them a license for. Digging a little deeper I'm starting to agree with GEMA on this one, it seems the bad press really started when a webcam feed from the Kiev protests was blocked by YouTube's automatic scanner. If this was because copyrighted music was heard on the feed or it was just a glitch or whatever is not certain, what is certain is that GEMA got the flak for censoring this webcam even though they had never requested it nor had any knowledge of it. However the message leads everyone to believe they are to blame when it's really YouTube at fault.

Alternate Message:

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're sorry. We're not allowed to show you the content of this video. Here's a link to 'How you can hit GEMA in the pocketbook.' Enjoy!"

Re:Welllll

[TangoMargarine]

You mean that guy that got (mostly) democratically and legally elected and *became* the government?

Re:Bullshit

[gsslay]

I'm not eating because you haven't given me a a sandwich.

I haven't asked you for a sandwich, and it is not your responsibility to ensure I have sandwiches, but somehow you're getting brought into my "no sandwich" fiasco.

I'm also not eating because Will Smith, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods and every single one of the damn Kardashians . They also have nothing to do with anything, but I'm calling them out too, because its an indisputable fact that not one of them have ever given me a single sandwich, when it is totally within their power to do so, if they so wished.

youtube is starting to lose it

[Anonymous Coward]

These out of control copyright nazis are killing youtube. The courts are ordering totally unreasonable enforcement which seems to be allowing rampant unjustified takedown notices to be issued and enforced. It's a "guilty until proven innocent" scenario.

I went to youtube originally because of the indy content, howtos, helpful videos showing playing techniques, etc. More than a few of those have been illegitimately closed down and more have stopped creating new content. It's really a huge shame, and worse that youtube/google seems to get the brunt of the blame.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why the original message is appropriate. It says everything you guys are saying, but better, more accurate. "it MAY contain" and "GEMA has not granted the respective music rights." We don't know if they will/will not license. That is speculation. Fact is: GEMA has not granted the respective music rights . . . regardless of fault or reason.

Re:Bullshit

[gsslay]

Or how about "YouTube won't pay for a licence that would cut into their advertising profit"? Honestly, I think that would make YouTube look worse.

See there's two sides to reaching a licensing agreement, and its easy to lay the blame on one.

Re:Bullshit

[jeti]

Do you have a source for this? To my knowledge, the GEMA demands 0.375 Euro cents [PDF] per view.

Re:Bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

GEMA is not owning the music.
They collect fees from "broadcasting agencies" and distribute the "revenue" from that to the "owners" of the work.

So "protect out content AND our public image"?

[erroneus]

I'm afraid it shouldn't be a negotiable detail. It is a free speech right of Google/YouTube to explain why something isn't available.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything it gives GEMA the benefit of the doubt that it even owns the content in the first place.

And that's a good thing? Personally, I would rather give the benefit of the doubt to the uploader, and require that GEMA provide a little more substantial proof than "we think this video infringes on our copyrights", which is what the current message implies to me.

Re:Bullshit

[Dishevel]

GEMA is, however, entirely responsible for claiming they own the music. In many cases, I bet they don't

If I were a betting man, I'd take that bet without hesitation.

Here you go. You Lose.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I somehow doubt that you, Will Smith, Lance Armstrong et al. have a government granted monopoly on distributing sandwiches and that there's a chance you'll swoop down on me if I accept a sandwich from someone else not knowing you didn't allow him to do that.

And if you operate like GEMA, you'd probably also swoop down even if it was a burrito, because it looked sandwich-like to you.

Re:Bullshit

[Dishevel]

Well done sir.

GEMA sucks

[fnj]

Somebody give it to these bird brains. Their head is so far up their ass, they don't have a single clue what the internet can do to them. I just checked whois for gemasucks.com, and looks to me like it is available.

violence is the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

someone from gema must die, preferably 2 people: the manager of gema and their lead lawyer - they must be tortured horribly before being killed, and everything must be recorded to video and posted on the interwebs for other people to see and learn. violence is the only answer to lawyers that abuse every single shit like this. kill them all, and if possible kill their families too

Re:Bullshit

[Dishevel]

As someone who has dealt with GEMA before I have to say that of everything that has come from Germany GEMA is probably the least sympathetic.

I so agree. I actually do have less sympathy for GEMA than I do for Nazis.

Re:Bullshit

[moronoxyd]

Digging a little deeper I'm starting to agree with GEMA on this one, it seems the bad press really started when a webcam feed from the Kiev protests was blocked by YouTube's automatic scanner.

No. Youtube shows this message for a long time, the GEMA complains about it for just as long, and the case was file long before the events in Ukraine.

However the message leads everyone to believe they are to blame when it's really YouTube at fault.

I know the German original, and in my opinion it does NOT put the blame on the GEMA.It does NOT say that the GEMA refused to granz a license, but only that no license was given.

Nor is it correct to blame Youtube for not finding an agreement with the GEMA. Neither party are willing to give enough ground for them to meet half way.

Re:Bullshit

[moronoxyd]

The GEMA is the organization who sole purpose of being is to license rights to broadcaster.
Thus the statement is correct: The GEMA would be the one who has to granz a license, and no such license was granted (as of now). The statement does NOT say that the GEMA refused to grant a license. That would be a lie, but that's not what YT says.

Re:"Seems pretty neutral"

[houghi]

Those millions they lost, where would they come from? I am guessing that is money from VEVO and spotify, not lost sales because people do not buy the records. Because that would mean that copyright is bad for sales.

And I should now seriously choose between Sony and GEMA? I choose not to choose. I choose copyleft.

Give user both sides:

[Tablizer]

How about this:

"This video is not available due to an unspecified situation between GEMA and Youtube. Click here to read GEMA's side of the story. Click here to read Youtube's side of the story."

Re:"Seems pretty neutral"

[lennier1]

You know you're in trouble when even a big music corporation criticizes you as a hindrance to the transition into the digital age.

Re:Bullshit

[tlambert]

So in it's entirety it does raise the initial impression that YouTube is good and understanding whereas GEMA is the evil empire. The reality probably lies somewhere in between.

The middle being "YouTube is neither good nor understanding *and* GEMA is the evil empire"?

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

OK, that was one case. You still have the other (many-1) to find.

Obviously the strategies used by the media umbrella groups have false positives. And I've said repeatedly in this discussion and elsewhere that they should be penalised if they go after people incorrectly. In this case, I find it as absurd as I imagine everyone else here does that the burden of proof should fall on the people organising the event.

Nevertheless, the existence of outliers doesn't mean most of the time the people these organisations go after aren't guilty as hell.

"Unfortunately..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany, we can't tell you why, but safe to say a certain group in Germany has never heard of the 'Streisand Effect'..."

Re: "Unfortunately..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany, we can't tell you why, but safe to say a certain group in Germany has never heard of the 'Streisand Effect'..."

State sanctioned (ie payed by the taxpayers) thugs like GEMA, SIAE, SACEM etc... are the scourge of the internet in the EU.
They don't give a shit about the Streisand effect cause they can block by dns/ip whatever the consider to be "their" intellectual property even when it is not true. They have the full force of the state guarding their back. For pete's sake, SIAE in Italy blackmailed websites to start paying for the broadcast of movie trailers put out by hollywood studios. And the movie studios already pay the necessary € to those thugs. It's a no win situation for the common man.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I would be very surprised if anywhere near 10% of the enquiries by these industry organisations were false positives for material they don't have the rights to. GEMA do seem to be worse than most and it seems the German system has a dubious burden of proof arrangement, but copyright infringement is still happening plenty in Germany, just like everywhere else.

Re:Bullshit

[Dishevel]

These are not outliers. If you look at all you can find many cases of GEMA, RIAA, MPAA and many other "Rights" organizations spend tons of time and effort doing their best to not only steal from innocent people but ripping off their own clients.

You do not even have to look hard. Just look.

"it may contain" ?? wtf.

[Anonymous Coward]

every url on the whole of the interwebs "may contain" stuff that someone, somewhere doesn't want google to index or distribute, and "may" have a legal right to bar them from said indexing and/or distribution..

Re:Bullshit

[NoZart]

They blocked Gangnam Style for some amount of time, which didn't even originate in Germany.

Re:Bullshit

[CrimsonAvenger]

Googles response

Google's response

Re:Bullshit

[N0Man74]

"We have blocked this content because we think that it might contain material that is not licensed by GEMA. We definitely aren't saying that it is being blocked due to GEMA being made up of douchebags. Thank you."

Drop the pages altogether

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother to post about blocked content? Were I Youtube, I'd just yank all mention of GEMA and its music. There'd be no page on which to post any notice. Let them live with no publicity at all.

Re:Bullshit

[I'm New Around Here]

I use "many" to mean "more than 5". I know many people who also use it that way.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If there are so many examples, it's odd that you only managed to cite one. But seriously, we've all heard of the **AA screwing up and suing grandmothers or two year olds or dead people. We know they make mistakes/act carelessly [delete as applicable], and once again, I have no problem with punishing them for any harm they do as a result.

But for every one of those, how many people escaped with some argument that an IP address didn't identify them specifically, even though it had been the fixed IP address of the broadband connection to the house in which only they lived for years, and 50 movies and 100 hit songs had been shared on BitTorrent over the past year from that IP address? Most of those people are guilty as sin.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Well, there you go. At least they've done something positive for the world. ;-)

GEMA has no reputation to lose

[Anonymous Coward]

GEMA has no good reputation what so ever except for the few millionaire musicians who actually profit from them. Many small indy musicians pay more to GEMA then they receive in royalties. In fact GEMA is one of the most hated (and I mean real hate) organisations in Germany with an almost complete monopole on music rights and a dickhead attitude. Even if you are not a member of GEMA they simply declare your music by default to be GEMA content (and thus forced to pay GEMA) unless proven otherwise. Anonymous music is not possible without forfeiting all rights to GEMA. Even if you play your own songs you have to pay GEMA or prove that GEMA has no rights. They are a state sanctioned asshole company to fill their own coffers as they please.

Re:GEMA has no reputation to lose

[Anonymous Coward]

GEMA has no good reputation what so ever except for the few millionaire musicians who actually profit from them. Many small indy musicians pay more to GEMA then they receive in royalties. In fact GEMA is one of the most hated (and I mean real hate) organisations in Germany with an almost complete monopole on music rights and a dickhead attitude. Even if you are not a member of GEMA they simply declare your music by default to be GEMA content (and thus forced to pay GEMA) unless proven otherwise. Anonymous music is not possible without forfeiting all rights to GEMA. Even if you play your own songs you have to pay GEMA or prove that GEMA has no rights. They are a state sanctioned asshole company to fill their own coffers as they please.

Looks like GEMA took the rulebook right out of the SIAE's hands (the italian equivalent of GEMA, and consider SIAE was instituted in 1882). SIAE is one if not the most despised organisation in italy. Mafioso like organisation, back by the full force of the state. Has a complete monopoly on music rights and has a dickhead attitude. They even manage to lose tens of milions of € per year and give back very few royalties to the musicians. SIAE is in the red for almost 1 billion €. It's nothing more than a state sanctioned criminal group.

This is backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

If something on the Internet is being censored, either by the government or by a greedy corporation, it should be clearly labeled that it is being censored and by whom.

Youtube doesn't know.

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither does GEMA, but they at least CLAIM to know it is.

Therefore it cannot be "we think that it contained music", but "GEMA tells us (in unconfirmed reports) that it contained music".

Re:Bullshit

[luther349]

the problem is the percentage is 100% because youtubes been broken for some time.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

You were wrong. It doesn't matter how much you try to weasel out of it. Be honest, admit that you were wrong, deal with it and move on.

Worse Than US

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I thought the US was the sickest nation that had sold its soul to business. It appears that the legal system in Germany may well be even worse. One day we just might get the idea that when something is broadcast it is no longer private. After all if a musician really wants to keep his music as private property why would he let others hear it at all? That is as silly as me claiming i have a secret and then telling half of my friends all of the details.

A preposterous sitution

[Anonymous Coward]

They sought to block the content and went to court to get an order forcing youtube to block the content. When youtube blocks and tells people it's blocked because of GEMA they object saying it's blocked because of youtube? That's bullshit. It's blocked because of GEMA. Lets hope there's a huge Streisand effect here.

Re:Bullshit

[Carewolf]

Actually they don't even collect fees for 99.999% (yes 5 nines), of the videos youtube has randomly decided to block in Germany.

GEMA requested less than 10 videos blocked (unless fees are paid), but Youtube has blocked ALL videos containing any elements of music in Germany. The videos currently unblocked are those where the owner has gone first to GEMA to figure out why they asked it to be blocked, are told by very tired GEMA people they have nothing to do with it, and go to youtube, then forced Youtube to stop lying and unblock it germany.

Currently this leads to the odd situation of only music from bands touring in Germany are unblocked on Youtube as the bands one by one force Youtube to stop their unilateral German blockade.

Re:Bullshit

[JeffAtl]

Who said anything about it being a good thing?

Re:Bullshit

[JeffAtl]

No, you're not eating because GEMA is claiming ownership of your sandwich and youtube is required to accept GEMA's claim.

Re:Bullshit

[WindBourne]

and the owners of the work would be the labels.

How about the following message:

[Anonymous Coward]

We are currently unable to tell you why this video has been taken down because GEMA would not like to let you know. Please contact GEMA at:

Bayreuther Straße 37 10787 Berlin Postfach 30 12 40 10722 Berlin Tel.: +49 30 21245-00

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_YouTube_videos_in_Germany

Sounds reasonable to me....

cool

[Anonymous Coward]

play duck life 5

WRONG- you miss all the 'exceptions'

[Anonymous Coward]

Under EU Law there is ZERO Right to 'freedom of expression'. Why? Because the list of exceptions covers ever possible form of expression. Saying "you are free to do X, but we may optionally prohibit A-W" when the list A-W includes EVERYTHING in Z is not any form of 'freedom'.

The EU recognises 'good order', 'cultural offensiveness', 'national offensiveness' and 'banned by the legally elected government' as reasonable exceptions, as tested by the ECHR. So, in reality, 'freedom of expression' in the EU means free to say the things your government allows.

In the UK, for instance, supporting the people of nations invaded by the UK, US or Israeli armed forces is legally a 'terrorist' offense, and individuals (mostly British Muslims) have been imprisoned in the UK for doing no more than this. In Greece, individuals have been imprisoned for 'blasphemy', for gently mocking the more ludicrous aspects of the Greek Orthodox religion. Since Tony Blair first rose to absolute power in the UK, the Human Court of Human Rights has almost universally ruled in favour of governments restricting the rights of their citizens.

In the USA, by comparison, the Supreme Court has shot down almost every attempt by national and state governments to limit the universal right to free speech. While abuses against free speech are legion and growing in the USA, almost none withstand supreme court scrutiny The opposite is true in the EU, where the highest court almost alwyas finds in favour of governmental restrictions on free speech.

Re:Bullshit

[thaylin]

Except we are talking proportions here. If it was more than 50% would you use many or most?

Re:Bullshit

[chilvence]

And with out these collections, how else would instantly recognisable and immensely popular German music be taking the world by storm like it isn't actually doing?

Re:Bullshit

[MPolo]

It should also be noted that this also includes all the music already licensed through the RIAA, because GEMA is the sole licensor for Germany. So "random boy band"'s own "protectors" have already agreed to a price which Google was willing to pay; only this sublicensor wants more than the RIAA gets. And insists on a per click, which is of course very cheatable. Not that I don't completely trust giant copyright associations on these things.

Other distribution channels exist

[tepples]

Which distribution channel owned by the major record labels has no viable alternative? Indie artists can self-publish their records through CD Baby or TuneCore.

Re:Other distribution channels exist

[jandrese]

Wal*Mart, Target, etc...

Re:Bullshit

[tepples]

"The rate GEMA proposes would cause YouTube to lose money with every view." Is that still not neutral enough?

leech

[Anonymous Coward]

the GEMA like most other media licensing organisations are state-supported leeches

Re:Bullshit

[MrL0G1C]

We know they make mistakes/act carelessly/are sociopathic cunts [delete as applicable]

FTFY

Most of those people are guilty as sin.

They may have infringed upon some copyrights, but they don't deserve to have their whole lives destroyed for that. (USA)

Re: "Seems pretty neutral"

[Anonymous Coward]

A CEO of Sony Music stated "“I suspect that some members of GEMA’s supervisory board have not yet arrived in the digital era."

Panic - irony stack recursion overflow. System halted.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

They may have infringed upon some copyrights, but they don't deserve to have their whole lives destroyed for that.

Of course not. The current legal position in the US is absurd.

Re:Bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

but Youtube has blocked ALL videos containing any elements of music in Germany.
That is nonsense.
The rest of your post as well.

Youtube can and only does block a video on an individual request (from the copyright owner or a society responsible to gather fees) regarding that video.

Currently this leads to the odd situation of only music from bands touring in Germany are unblocked on Youtube as the bands one by one force Youtube to stop their unilateral German blockade.
Sorry, that is bollocks.
GEMA can not block a piece of music or a video containing that music, which it has not the authority to collect fees for (granted by the rights owner).

Re:Bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

GEMA is not collecting for german music only but for every piece that is sold in germany (as long as the right owners authorize GEMA to do so)

Point of order

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding 'Saying that GEMA "hasn't granted the rights" implies that they were asked to do so...'

No. It does not imply that at all. The statement could, if you squint hard and look sideways, imply that GEMA is part of some sort of problem. However it definitely does not imply that someone asked GEMA and GEMA said no.

For instance, just taking the statement as our sole source of information. YouTube plausibly might be aware that GEMA was the copyright holder, or represented the copyright holder, and that a licensing agreement was needed. YouTube could, entirely on their own, decline to show the videos, knowing that such an agreement was not in place. And display the statement shown.

My interpretation is just as plausible as yours.

Re:"Seems pretty neutral"

[UnknowingFool]

Those millions they lost, where would they come from? I am guessing that is money from VEVO and spotify, not lost sales because people do not buy the records. Because that would mean that copyright is bad for sales.

And you are sure about that, how? Believe it or not, people actually buy albums based on music they heard for free. People might see a band based on free music. They might even buy merchandise or the band's next album.

And I should now seriously choose between Sony and GEMA? I choose not to choose. I choose copyleft.

No one asked you to choose. If Sony of all music companies is calling out GEMA, you'd have to think that what they are doing something very unreasonable.

Re:Bullshit

[mjwx]

I am certain that any notice that mentions that GEMA has requested the vid be blocked will not be allowed.

Which is pretty much what they were complaining about. YouTube has blocked the video because they fear - usually quite correctly - that it contains music which GEMA hasn't granted them a license for. Digging a little deeper I'm starting to agree with GEMA on this one, it seems the bad press really started when a webcam feed from the Kiev protests was blocked by YouTube's automatic scanner. If this was because copyrighted music was heard on the feed or it was just a glitch or whatever is not certain, what is certain is that GEMA got the flak for censoring this webcam even though they had never requested it nor had any knowledge of it. However the message leads everyone to believe they are to blame when it's really YouTube at fault.

YouTube isn't at fault. They were forced to block any content that may belong to GEMA, seeing as GEMA aren't paying for this service Google have the right to do it in their way. GEMA made their bed, now they dont want to lie in it.

Re:Bullshit

[Carewolf]

Youtube can and only does block a video on an individual request (from the copyright owner or a society responsible to gather fees) regarding that video.

Not in this case. Youtube is the one who has decided to default block all music in Germany and claim GEMA asked for it. Read the article for instance, this is the lie they have been forced to change.

GEMA can not block a piece of music or a video containing that music, which it has not the authority to collect fees for (granted by the rights owner).

They don't. Youtube blocks them.

Re:Bullshit

[cheetah_spottycat]

That is only partly correct. GEMA indeed owns music written by their members. If you beome a member, you basially sign away all rights of all music you have written in the past and will ever write in the future to them. You literally no longer own your own compositions.

As a return, you get paid according to a convoluted fixed tariff system that heavily favours top-40 producers, deducts up to 80% of fees, gets paid out with up to two years of delay - and the exclusivity of the deal leads to absurd situation like artists having to pay for your own concerts.

In addition to that, GEMA also acts as a collection agency for foreign copyright organisations who have granted GEMA collection rights through IFPI.

Walmart and Target themselves have alternatives

[tepples]

The alternative to Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and regional chains is iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Bandcamp, and other web sites that offer paid downloads. Unlike CD purchases, paid downloads let the customer play the purchased tracks on a PMP or phone without having to rip the disc, and if he wants a CD to play on legacy equipment, he can still burn one. Even on 384 kbps DSL, buying a 256 kbps MP3 album is still faster than taking the bus to Target, buying the CD, and taking the bus home, and unlike the bus, it's open 24/7.

Re:Bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

That is only partly correct. GEMA indeed owns music written by their members. If you beome a member, you basially sign away all rights of all music you have written in the past and will ever write in the future to them. You literally no longer own your own compositions.

That is wrong. Completely wrong.

You only sign one single right away: the right to collect fees from radio stations, tv stations, and public events where your music (or other art) is performed.

You still have the "right" to sell the "rights" to any lable you want.

Re:Bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

Youtube is the one who has decided to default block all music in Germany and claim GEMA asked for it.
That is wrong.

Youtube blocks only content where the GEMA requests the blocking. For easy checking: go on youtube and search for something german, there is plenty of german stuff on Youtube.

Just stop serving up YouTube to Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably wouldn't take long to realize they were being total schmucks all along.

Re:Bullshit

[gsslay]

Where does it say that GEMA has claimed ownership? This is Youtube saying it may be GEMA's, so we're blocking it.

YouTube should change the message to this

[Anonymous Coward]

Your video cannot be viewed because GEMA are a bunch of mindless jerks who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes....... ;-)

despite the actual translation of the German version of the message .... The above is what it should be taken as meaning....
intentionally quoting Hitch Hikers guide to the Galaxy

Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what the message means. The message perfectly and neutrally sums up the situation as is. And you know it, more's the pity.

Re:Bullshit

[cheetah_spottycat]

Nope, the deal is exclusive, so one you've sold your soul to GEMA, your "Urheberrecht" is gone. Here's the contract: https://www.gema.de/fileadmin/...

Re:Bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

No its not, you don't even sell your Urheberrecht to GEMA (Urheberrechte / aka authors rights or layman copyright, can not be sold anyway under the Bern Convention), you sell the authority to collect fees from radio stations etc. and disco clubs.
It has nothing at all to do with your rights to sell CDs or mp3s or to make derived works aka a movie or a book or whatever.
You are completely mistaken (I'm german btw. and I know a lot of people that have their workes registered with GEMA).

Re:Bullshit

[I'm New Around Here]

I don't use "most" until it's about 2/3 or 3/4 of the whole. 51% is not "most" in any meaningful way, and 60% is still short of it for my support.