Germans can’t see meteorite YouTube videos due to copyright dispute
Found on Ars Technica on Wednesday, 20 February 2013
As a result of an ongoing dispute between Google (YouTube's parent company) and GEMA, the primary German performance rights organization, a number of Russian YouTube videos have been blocked from within Germany. The reason? These videos contain background music playing from a Russian car radio.
“YouTube has no insight into what rights GEMA represents,” the Google subsidiary wrote. “Due to the legal and financial risks that result from these processes in the context of GEMA’s [published royalty fee structure], music videos are blocked in Germany.”
This is so ridiculous. The GEMA has way too much power because they don't have to prove you played their music; instead you have to prove you did not.