The rights and royalty company GEMA out of Munich, Germany, is easily one of the most, if not the most, disliked German company.
GEMA is famous for a relentless heavy-handed attitude towards all things royalty, even taking on YouTube in court, making the YouTube experience for German users a course of "black screens of GEMA" channel surfing.
When people around here think they have seen a GEMA stunt that cannot possibly be topped, GEMA proves otherwise.
This time around, they blacked out the App "Euro-Maidan" which streams the events from Kiev, Ukraine.
This upset even conservative members of parliament, a traditionally GEMA favoring group. How can GEMA dare to block important political events?
Says GEMA: well, you may hear music for which we hold the German rights and hence want royalties, complain to YouTube to get the channel unblocked.
[Update] GEMA went to court in Munich, Germany, to make it very clear that GEMA is more than willing to have Germans view whatever may be available IF an appropriate fee is paid. Google previously offered GEMA a share of advertising revenue but the copyright guardians declined.
These glorified accountants are already hatching new plans for jacking up "royalty" fees for smartphones because you "can use them to store copyrighted content". We were surprised to find that they have not forced manufacturers of pencils and pens to pay a fee because you can use these devices to copy copyrighted material.
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