Video not available in Germany due to music copyright…
I’ve had this a couple of times, now. The situation in Germany is entirely different from all other countries due to the influence of GEMA, a state-authorized organization that represents musical author’s rights.
The way the system now works, I think, is that the author (or the distributor) gets a say in how the usage of their material in a youtube video is handled. If they want it off the site, it will go offline. In the most favorable cases, they will keep it their but place advertisements on your video and the revenue goes to them (I find that absolutely fair). This doesn’t work on mobile devices, so the video will appear “blocked” on iPhones etc. but playable on computers. Sometimes, they will block it locally. What happened here is it says “blocked in Germany” on my youtube account but I can still play it – on the laptop, not on the iPhone!
There’s a moral aspect to this, of course, too. Some call it “theft” to reuse music of others. I strongly disagree. I’m using a product I purchased – so theft is out of the question. But is what I’m doing private usage or is it public? I think these things need to be redefined. In the old days, I might have walked around with a cassette containing my video, showing it to the folks at the flying club, and maybe friends and family. With 2015 technology, I’m doing the same using youtube and sharing the video with euroga and my circle of facebook friends. It is NOT posted “publically” on youtube, i.e. it cannot be searched and found. You need to know the URL. Facebook is in my view definitely not “public”, as it is a clearly defined group of people. Euroga is a bit more of a grey area in the sense that in theory, everyone could view it.
I’m definitely not using the song commercially. There’s ATIS and some radio chat in the background (yeah I know. Another topic in Germany…) so the video cannot be used to just listen to the song. On the contrary, it’s a new song and I mention the name and the artist in the credits so it could even be regarded as promotional, in a sense. I really don’t think the author is suffering any harm from me using the song. Having said that, as stated earlier, I think it’s a fair system to let the authors or their representatives decide on a platform like youtube, once usage of their material is detected, what should happen with it.
Yes, it is a music copyright issue, happens a lot with youtube.
Copyright does protect the author, and the industry at large. It may not seem like this on the surface. But look which advertising company shamelessly racks up all the profits, off of the work of content creators. Hint: The company used to have the slogan “Don’t be evil”. How cynical in hindsight.
