German Kindergartens Ordered To Pay Copyright For Songs

BBird writes "Deutsche Welle reports: 'Up until this year, preschools could teach and produce any kind of song they wanted. But now they have to pay for a license if they want children to sing certain songs. A tightening of copyright rules means kindergartens now have to pay fees to Germany's music licensing agency, GEMA, to use songs that they reproduce and perform. The organization has begun notifying creches and other daycare facilities that if they reproduce music to be sung or performed, they must pay for a license.'"

The license is for copying sheet music.

[ephraimX]

Note that this only applies to making copies of sheet music, not merely singing the songs (or arranging, or performing, or anything else). Same sort of thing is in effect here in Canada, and I'm sure many other places. Not a wonderful policy, but not the culture-destroying terror that the summary implies.

Pirates to the rescue!

[silanea]

People affiliated with the german Pirate Party have created and published a song book [klarmachen...aendern.de] (sorry, no english translation available) with several popular Christmas songs. They created the sheet music themselves and used only lyrics whose copyright protection has expired, so the song book can be freely used and distributed.

strike back

[Anonymous Coward]

The Pirate Party reacted by releasing a song book of freely licensed notesheets and song texts. That's basically a big "fuck you too" to the content cartels and their fee-squeezing lackeys. The more they're doing that sort of bullshit, the more the people are willing to rebel.

http://musik.klarmachen-zum-aendern.de/nachrichten/gemeinfreie_notenblaetter_fuer_advents-_und_weihnachtslieder_3_update-588 [klarmachen...aendern.de]

Re:this is not idle.

[zn0k]

Got a link for that? Sorry to ask for citation, but this: https://www.gema.de/presse/aktuelle-pressemitteilungen/presse-details/article/singen-erwuenscht-illegales-kopieren-verboten.html [www.gema.de] press release by GEMA (in the original German) explicitly says that in this case they have been tasked by the VG Musikedition (an entity completely separate from GEMA) with enforcing the licensing of reproduction of song lyrics and sheet music. VG Musikedition has absolutely nothing to do with performance, which contradicts your statement that singing out loud in class is performing, and that performing is covered by the same rules. Since VG Musikedition doesn't deal with performances at all, performing cannot possibly be covered by the same rules, and it would be impossible to ask for a fee for performance tomorrow under the same statutes.

I'd appreciate any corrections.

Gross misunderstanding

[Antisyzygy]

Many people are basing their response on a gross misunderstanding. They are not charging kids to sing, they are charging for each kid to have their own sheet music. This is a common practice for all sheet music in band class, orchestra class, professional symphonic orchestras, church bands, ect. You could be outraged that they are targeting education or young kids, but not over the singing part unless you already disagree with the aforementioned common practice.