GEMA Music Collection Society No Longer Will Let Kindergartens Get Away With Teaching Music For Free

from the ownership-society dept

We've discussed a few times how the German music collection society GEMA often appears to be one of the worst of the worst when it comes to copyright maximalism. Its latest move is particularly egregious. While it used to allow pre-schools/kindergartens to hand out sheets with music to the children for singing for free, its policy recently changed, so that the schools now need to pay up (found via Slashdot). In the last few weeks, GEMA started sending out notices to these facilities, warning them to either pay up or no longer hand out sheets with music on it to students. This seems reminiscent of ASCAP demanding that Girl Scouts pay up for singing songs around the campfire. These collection societies have really gotten desperate lately, and now they're trying to shake down kindergarten students for cash. How nice of them.

Filed Under: copyright, germany, kindergarten, music
Companies: gema

Hollywood Illegally Demanded Payments From Irish Kindergarteners

from the and-this,-kids,-is-what-we-call-a-shakedown dept

It's no secret that the entertainment industry believes that it deserves to be paid (often multiple times) every time anyone accesses, views or listens to any of its content. That's resulted in some really bad policies that limit the potential for future growth, but also some ridiculous scenarios like the one described over at TorrentFreak, concerning the Motion Picture Licensing Company, who illegally demanded 10 euros per child (later reduced to 3 euros) from Irish kindergartens, for the right to watch DVDs in class. It turns out that the whole thing was illegal, as it violated a copyright act in Ireland by not filing for a license to collect royalty revenue (it has since filed for the license). In the meantime, the folks who run these schools are a bit annoyed by the whole thing, noting that they rarely, if ever, show DVDs anyway and don't see why they should have to pay a fee per student. In fact, one educator noted that the only time they showed DVDs was when they would "pretend" to go to the cinema -- and even that would likely lead kids to eventually want to go see more movies.

Filed Under: ireland, kindergarten, movies, royalties
Companies: mplc