If you live in Ger­many, prob­a­bly you hate GEMA as much as the next John in his right mind. For those who don’t know, GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalis­che Auf­führungs– und mech­a­nis­che Vervielfäl­ti­gungsrechte. Eng­lish: Soci­ety for musi­cal per­form­ing and mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion rights) is a per­for­mance rights orga­ni­za­tion from Germany.

Its pur­pose is to col­lect roy­alty fees from the organ­is­ers of pub­lic events where music pro­tected by GEMA is played as well as media man­u­fac­tur­ers and pub­lish­ers and broad­cast­ing stations.

GEMA are also the fuck­ers respon­si­ble for block­ing the videos in youtube, as Wiki says:

Music videos for major label artists on YouTube, as well as many videos con­tain­ing back­ground music, have been unavail­able in Ger­many since the end of March 2009 as GEMA sought to raise its fee charged to YouTube to 12 euro cents per streamed video., a fee a YouTube spokesman described as “pro­hib­i­tive”. The issue is set to be taken up by a Cal­i­for­nia court.

GEMA is also from next year increas­ing in grants, nine times more, the roy­al­ties they col­lect from clubs and bars all over Berlin. Which will end up in many venues hav­ing to close down.

FAIR Play is orginiz­ing a mas­sive Demo out­side Frannz Club (this Mon­day, 25.06. 18:00–22:00) where GEMA are hav­ing a member’s meeting.

Check also the On-line Peti­tion.