German Kindergartens Forced To Pay for Teaching Copyrighted Songs
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 29th Dec 2010 22:45 UTC
Multimedia, AV "A tightening of copyright rules means kindergartens now have to pay fees to Germany's music licensing agency, GEMA, to use songs that they reproduce and perform. The organization has begun notifying creches and other daycare facilities that if they reproduce music to be sung or performed, they must pay for a license. 'If a preschool wants to make its own copy of certain music - if the words of a song or the musical score is copied - then they need to buy a license,' GEMA spokesperson Peter Hempel told Deutsche Welle." Honestly. I wonder how those pro-RIAA/MPAA folk we have on OSNews feel about this. This is EXACTLY why I try to do my part (a small part, but still) in fighting big content. I wonder how much has to happen for our politicians to open their eyes, and see current copyright law for what it really is: pure venom. Poison of the most dangerous kind, which is destroying our very culture, which is stifling art and science. News like this SICKENS me. How anyone can defend something like this is beyond me.
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RE: Open Songs
by Raffaele on Fri 31st Dec 2010 02:06 UTC in reply to "Open Songs"
Raffaele
Member since:
2005-11-12

I've been thinking about the conflict between corporate control of media and historical culture. Part of the economy of my town, Los Angeles, is based on selling copyrighted media to the world. But since copyrights expire, there is a recurring need to continually ridicule old, free culture and replace it with new, copyrighted culture. It is interesting how it plays out. In school we learn a corpus of literature that has a progression: ancient (Homer) to English (Beowulf, Shakespeare, Austen) to American (Twain, Hemmingway). We're taught to see it in a context. But in music or dance, in the public school system, there is no default instruction, no corpus, and no context. Unless your parents pay for private tuition, you just gather what you will from your parents, friends, internet, radio, and TV.


Do you know that Homer, Shakespeare and native american folk songs are free of copyright but it could be charged of copyright any public play made of it by
modern actors, and singers?

Any performance of an actor playing Shakespeare belongs to that actor...

Any music compact disk collecting ancient native american songs belongs to the singers and the musicians who recorded their own performance of that songs...

Shakespeare and native american songs are free of copyright but actors and musicians have the right to eat and earn money, and they got their renevue from their performances.

And speaking in terms of performances made by persons who spread to the public their own interpretation of ancient culture songs and comedies it is the "performance" that is copyrighted, not the free old song or the free old literature books.

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