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.
This weekend, I went all the way to Hamburg in order to see the only gig by The Frames in Germany. Let me tell you, every single kilometre was absolutely worth it: Glen and the boys played about two hours of awesome, hand-made, emotional rock music. Fitzcarraldo, Revelate, God Bless Mom, Lay Me Down, Seven Day Mile, What Happens When The Heart Just Stops… you name it, they played it (unexpected: Kraftwerk’s Autobahn). And I finally got my hands on their rather obscure, finally re-released debut album Another Love Song. Gee, I wish I could go to Dublin and see one of the four gigs they play in their hometown (1x Olympia Theatre, 1x Vicar Street, 2x Whelan’s); they are all sold-out, though.
Some of you might have noticed – either I told you or you guessed it from my post frequency – that I have been working quite a bit during the last weeks. Today, the fruits of this work finally went online: we relaunched 5PRIME.com, my employer’s corporate website. Apart from the new design and improved usability, we have added, e.g., a new product line, some pages about application areas and an extended literature search.
Kudos to Marian, who created a little surprise that you might want to check out, and his buddy Kristian, for a nudge into the right direction when the two of us did not see the wood for the trees.
Just navigate to the homepage (you have to select your country first) and enjoy the video!
