Who in the hell is GEMA?

I had intended to fire another shot across the bow of the Music Publishers Association of America. You know, the turkey’s threatening legal action against OLGA, the On Line Guitar Archives. But, in browsing the net, researching stories, I came across an article from Germany that I found both interesting and scary.

A collection rights society is responsible for collecting fees for the performance and mechanical reproduction of musical or other copyrighted works. The MPA, for example, represents the copyright holders who publish sheet music and tab, and see to it that everyone pays for the privilege of publishing copyrighted works in any format, whether for profit or pleasure.

A collection “rights” outfit in Germany is currently negotiating a deal with manufacturers of PC’s whereby they will pay a “levy” to that society, GEMA, on the sale of all new computers sold in that country.

Their justification is that PC’s allow users to make private copies of text, audio and video data distributed over the internet. Since private copying can’t be stopped, they want levies to be paid on new computers in the same way as it is now paid on CD’s, DVD’s, audio cassettes, etc. The money collected, theoretically, will be distributed to the creators of the copyrighted works.

And, before I go much further, I should point out that the collection of a levy is a done deal; the sticking point is how much the levy will be. The organization representing the manufacturers of the PC’s has suggested 15 Euros ($20.00 Cdn) per unit. GEMA is asking for over 36 Euros per unit ($50.00 Cdn).

But, even the most cursory investigation reveals some very serious concerns with this idea. Among the major flaws is a presumption of guilt. GEMA is assuming that every computer purchased will be used to make illegal copies of music, movies and computer applications. This is not the case. And people who download, store or distribute perfectly legal material via the internet should not be required to pay extortion money to anyone for the right to do so.

For example, one of my favourite sites is Project Gutenberg. There you can download free copies of some of the classics of literature; Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc, etc. And, there are probably thousands of free computer applications being distributed freely and legally under various licenses across the internet. Should users be required to pay a fee for downloading and copying this legal material?

No one should be fooled by the suggestion that it is the manufacturer who is paying the levy, not the consumer. That’s a no brainer. The additional cost will be passed on to the consumer, whether or not they use their PC for an illegal purpose.

Then there’s the fact that there is already a levy on the blank media, the CD’s, DVD’s, etc. That’s already true in Canada, as well as in Germany. And, in Germany there is an additional levy on the device used to create the media, CD and DVD burners, for example. Adding a levy on top of that is going a little overboard.

And, if the levy itself isn’t going overboard, then the demand by GEMA that the levy should be retroactive to 2002 certainly has to be considered overkill. Estimates are that between 2002 through 2005, there were 13 million computers sold in Germany. The estimated cost of a retroactive levy is 350 million Euros; that’s roughly half a billion dollars Canadian.

Canada’s copyright legislation is being discussed in Parliament as I write this post. Given some of the things happening in the world of copyright restriction, enforcers such as the RIAA, the MMPA, the MPA, and GEMA in Germany, Canadians should be paying a whole lot more attention to what’s happening. There’s a lot more than a few bucks involved.

It’s a matter of personal freedom. Think about it for a minute. Every time you buy a blank CD to record a video of little Bobby’s birthday party, you’re paying a levy to some group you’ve likely never heard of, simply because that blank CD could be used to illegally copy restricted material.

Most people pay little attention to copyright laws, because they don’t think their personal freedoms are jeopardized by copyright restrictions; they’re wrong. And, given the material I’ve collected while researching this topic, I’ll probably be ranting about this bloody madness in future posts.