GEMA vs. Jamendo et al. - Get Money for Nothing
Found on Content Sphere on Friday, 10 April 2009
Currently, there are 9.000 artists at Jamendo, offering about 200.000 tracks. Anything available is either under Creative Commons license, or it is under Free Art License. Prerequisite for any artist offering his output at Jamendo PRO is that no one involved in the production is contracted to German's collecting institution GEMA or any other similar institution.
According to Jamendo, this certificate is acknowledged by GEMA and the likes. See Jamendo FAQs. Yet, GEMA denies any knowledge of this. They claim not to know Jamendo's certificate.
In fact, this means every commercial or public use of music (you see, borderline is quite blurry) has to be documented for GEMA. The duty of proof is upon the defendant.
In dubio contra reo. This ruling is so wrong it can't be described. Just because some company is in control of the largest part of the market, it gets a blanco right to collect fees.