The GEMA is breaking the internet… and my blog

Freitag, 09. März 2012, 09:30 Uhr von Felix

This is YouTube letting me know that I cannot watch a certain video. The reason?

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

GEMA is an acronym and stands for Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte which is a marble of German officialese and roughly translates to Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights.

Because the GEMA asks for €0.1278 [sic!] per play — a price which is obviously not sustainable for the traffic gorilla that is YouTube — many of the (music) videos I have posted on Diskurswelt are not available to you if you are visiting from Germany. Sorry about that, but there is not much I can do about it. We have to wait for GEMA and YouTube to stop pointing fingers and sort this out like grown-ups.