Can you imagine your world of music without YouTube?

Well, can you? Did you watch Gangam Style on the infamous video platform when it just became popular? Do you look for music videos of your favorite artists and songs or try to find songs that you caught the melody of at last night’s party? If you do some of these things, you probably don’t live in Germany…

Because around here, almost all music videos or videos just containing copyrighted music are blocked on YouTube. What sounds like internet censorship in China and other non-western parts of the world is actually the sad everyday life of people in Germany. So why is that?

The Süddeutsche Zeitung released an article with some statistics at the end of January. It turns out that of the top 1000 videos on YouTube, most of them being popular music videos, 61.5% are not watchable within Germany. If you click on one of these videos, you’ll see a message like this:

So, in a nation where freedom is spelled with a capital “f”, music videos are not accessible on the world’s largest video collection platform. Even if the artist himself has uploaded the video, chances are it cannot be watched in Germany. In comparison, of the top 1000 most popular videos on YouTube, 15.3% cannot be accessed in South Sudan, 5.1% in the State of Vatican and 4,4% in Afghanistan.

To put it into a few words: it’s a disgrace. A hypocrisy for a nation that criticizes countries like Ukraine, Russia and China for not being as democratic, lets its people access less music videos than the freshly established, third-world and islamic nation of South Sudan. And it’s not even close.

The reason behind this is that YouTube itself blocks these videos for German viewers. It does so in order to protect itself from copyright infringement claims by GEMA – the Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte), the private but state-authorized copyright society in Germany.

Now people outside of Germany might ask why this is a problem, since many other western nations also have similar institutions. Well, Google, the parent company of YouTube, managed to settle on a deal with each on the amount of money the respective copyright society receives for each video clicked. Unfortunately, this is where the notorious German stinginess dominates again – because GEMA demands a resounding 0,00375 Euros (or 0,375 cents) per view. That is more than three times as much as the copyright society in Britain receives from Google. So in the end, GEMA is the reason for Germans not being able to watch videos that contain any sort of copyrighted music. Google/YouTube tried to solve this problem by asking GEMA for a list of artists and titles which they represent the copyrights of, but GEMA denied the request, saying that it would not make sense to send Google such a list, since it is Google itself that blocks the videos.

GEMA has since become an organization which the majority of people in Germany love to hate, especially young people who enjoy keeping up in the music world. The Germafrican contacted GEMA and asked why they insist on demanding such an outrageously high amount. I received the following answer:

“…in other countries, YouTube put pressure on the copyright societies. Higher sums have also been demanded there. We believe that our demands are not too high, but fair and adequate for our members.“

In the end, it comes down to how greedy GEMA is and whether it could settle for less money. Considering that the board members receive an annual salary of nearly 500.000 Euros, one might think they are in a position where negotiation with lower sums should be possible.

GEMA is obviously not aware of any social responsibility. Music is one of the most important parts of culture and in our modern times, where technology enables us to share pretty much anything, it is a real shame that a country like Germany is so far behind when it comes to simply listening to some music on YouTube, which normally is taken for granted in pretty much every other nation on our planet…

Megaupload 2.0 – the beginning of a new internet era?

The return of the next Megaupload file hosting website, Mega, is not far away! In less than 20 hours, Kim Schmitz, also known as Kim Dotcom and Kimble, will introduce his newest filesharing platform. And he did not choose this day by chance. Exactly one year ago his former Megaupload empire has been closed down by the FBI due to copyright infringement claims, most of them by the Motion Picture Association of America, as well as numerous record label companies based in the US.

These five words make quite a promise. But considering how successful Megaupload has been, everyone expects the new Mega to reach old benchmarks rather quickly. Especially now that Schmitz was able to use all the media coverage on the takedown of Megaupload to his advantage and campaign for his new project.

Of course everyone knows that copyrighted material was stored on the servers of Megaupload. And chances are quite high that similar content will be stored on the new servers as well. Even though that is considered to be illegal, the problem does not lie with the filehosting companies. It’s the users who upload illegal content to the servers, even though warnings have been installed, as they have to click on a checkbox before uploading, agreeing that they will not upload any material they do not own the rights to. But since prosecution in these cases is extremely difficult in comparison to peer-to-peer networks for example, the question remains why piracy remains to be such a big issue.

In Schmitz’s eyes, the problem lies with the Hollywood studios themselves. He claims that most motion picture studios and record label companies still don’t know how to market their products successfully.
In comparison to the times when people rented out DVDs at their local video store, made illegal copies and sold them to friends and peers, nowadays pretty much any user can find his or her way to the so called “warez” sites and pick up download links to copyrighted material,which is stored on the filehoster’s servers. And in comparison to the local “video thief” from twenty years ago, it’s the filehosting companies that make the money nowadays. It has been estimated that Megaupload made a resounding revenue of US$175 million per year!

Even entrepreneurs with clean slates, like the late Steve Jobs, saw the flaws in marketing strategies of the music and movie industries. Otherwise the iTunes store would not have been such a huge success. And of course the numbers speak here as well, with the iTunes store having made US$1.4 billion of revenue in the first quarter of 2011 alone.

Apparently, some bureaucrats see it as the responsibility of the filehosting company to check uploaded files on copyright infringement. This has been a very controversial topic, as one can compare this to banks, who also do not check what is inside of the customer’s deposit box. And in some cases, like Swiss banks, unreported earnings with millions of dollars in the bank account also do not get checked on legitimacy. Maybe we should have a debate on that first…

Anyway, if you are interested in what Kim Schmitz had to say about the closing down of Megaupload and his arrest in New Zealand last year, check out this interview:

Alex Clare, Internet Explorer’s (only?) star

In German television a new advertising star has risen. Chances are that you have already seen the new ad for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9. I always think it is a little weird to do a TV ad just for a browser – in my eyes it is a little unnecessary and perhaps the money could be used for something more important, like maybe PRIVACY. I had the same opinion when Google were advertising for Chrome. I don’t know whether their advertising had actually created a significant effect on usage stats. I for sure tried their browser and I use it from time to time, after Safari of course.

Nevertheless, Microsoft felt the urge to do something about their dropping user statistics for their house own browser, as numbers of usage have been decreasing steadily since 2004.

Internet Explorer usage in browser segment
(Source: Wikipedia)

Since I am a Mac user, I won’t have the chance to try Internet Explorer 9, as it is not supported on the Mac platform. Well, now some of you might say I could install Windows on a Mac too, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of getting a Mac in my opinion. So, I will simply have to rely on reviews from reputable sources.

But let’s get back to the song. Microsoft obviously had some real professionals taking care of their new ad and I have to say they did a pretty good job. The song in the ad is from a relatively unknown artist, Alex Clare, a young British singer-songwriter from London. He combines soul pop with dub step in such a modern way that let’s electro fans get all crazy and at the same time, let people who enjoy listening to great lyrics rather than a big bass beat enjoy his music no less. I like it very much and I can only recommend it.

It seems like Microsoft finally got something right – if their new browser lives up to its promises, then the browser market just got a whole lot more interesting.