Imagine youtube videos got blocked and nobody noticed..

When I first read that the German GEMA was blocking youtube, I thought … yeah right, April Fools Day. Especially as all music videos I looked for were right in their place. The only discernable difference I could see was that the whole page was upside down.

But, a couple of days later, it appears that GEMA has indeed blocked videos, but here’s the clou. They have only blocked official videos from artists that have officially been uploaded. All the other stuff, which is probably in excess of 75% I should think, is still there and visible.

Its all about money of course. GEMA wants more money for its artists and is asking youtube to give GEMA information about how many times a video is being viewed. Youtube refuses of course. By the way, we are reportedly talking about 1 (Euro) Cent per view. If I did something similar I would have to pay more than 20 Cents…

So here we are now with a situation where the legal videos have been banned, but its OK to watch the illegal ones. Strange carryings on indeed. And at the end of the day, its the artists that are suffering.