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Before, YT was completely unusable in Germany. You're right about GEMA, but it's a win for most ordinary people. Unfortunately many other streaming sites are us

by sparky_ 10y ago

Before, YT was completely unusable in Germany. You're right about GEMA, but it's a win for most ordinary people. Unfortunately many other streaming sites are useless still in all of EU. Netflix for example. Only with VPN through United States or maybe Britain do you achieve full value.

Kequc 10y ago
Why is it a win for most ordinary people that GEMA is so handsomely rewarded for limiting content? It is not a good thing at all, it emboldens them. Who does GEMA think that they are? You give Netflix as an example, that isn't going to be resolved any time soon following this deal. GEMA shouldn't exist.
- candiodari 10y ago
  In theory ? Same reason as copyright. The idea behind GEMA is to create a centralized organization for enforcing copyright. Instead of owing royalties to U2 for playing their songs in a cafe, you'd owe them to GEMA, who'd pay them to U2 according to how often they're played (I believe radio playlists are used as metrics to determine payouts). Secondly, any hard drive or other "blank recording media", such as usb sticks has a 10% surtax most of which goes to GEMA. Funny little details that suck about GEMA: 1) assumption of guilt. You have an event, even some birthday parties, you have to prove, by submitting playlists (paying "handling fees" for the privilege) and they may check, also not free to you. 2) one-sided, no government oversight on what is effectively an extra tax 3) they have pissed off just about everyone, including their beneficiaries 4) they're very heavy-handed In practice ? They're just leeches, they don't pay significant amounts to anyone despite getting quite a bit of money in. Even extremely famous artists that were famous for decades get something like a normal pay from the playing of their songs. Everybody hates them, their "customers" (ie. those who play music) and their beneficiaries. GEMA claims their costs are 15% of what is paid in. In practice it certainly looks to me like it's more like 80%. So it really just creates another abusive government monopoly with cushy jobs for a few government favored people. Additionally it creates a few (tiny) free (for the government) subsidies using a privately-levied tax, given to "cultural" institutions like orchestras and other such things nobody goes to anymore. Not enough to prevent them from dying, so even they are not happy.
  - biafra 10y ago
    We need a competitor to get rid of the GEMA assumption.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    As I mentioned in another thread, I feel that they alongside GEZ, just are a kind of government sponsored mafia kind of thing. Specially if I believe the stories how their employees sometimes coerce people to pay.
Noseshine 10y ago
> Before, YT was completely unusable in Germany This is gross exaggeration. I use Youtube extensively and I encountered a blocked video maybe 3% of the time, and only when looking at music videos. Even when that happened I simply enabled the (installed but usually remaining disabled) Proxmate Chrome extension to use a proxy and get the (music) video anyway. The change is welcome but won't have much of an effect on me. People using Youtube extensively for music - and "current" music - are probably most affected. I'd say the majority of music still was accessible. Often you would have another video upload of the same song accessible when one was blocked. Which reminds me of a different issue, is it possible that Youtube, and possibly other video portals too, deliberately ever so slightly messes up the sound of music videos? Maybe to ensure there still is an incentive to buy? I can't really tell for sure, but a lot of music to me sounds a little worse than I would have expected.
- darklajid 10y ago
  Actually I'm with the GP: A large number of videos I cared about were unwatchable - and the reason was usually low key background music from say an uploaded twitch stream. In other words: I don't (usually, it's quite rare) go to YT for music and still I really believe that this change improves my usage. I don't bother with proxy solutions, so this change is most welcome to me.
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    > I don't bother with proxy solutions Note that you didn't really have to do anything but install a Chrome extension. If you left it turned on it would detect when a video was blocked and reload the page through some proxy. Pretty low effort overall. Otherwise I would not have done it myself, the only videos I ever needed it for were pure music videos, which I can easily live without if it's even slightly inconvenient to see them. And remember the comment I replied to said "YT was completely unusable in Germany", which is definitely not true no matter how any one individual person might have been affected. It's one thing to speak about ones own experiences, but YT wasn't "unusable in Germany".
    - 10y ago

by sparky_ 10y ago

Kequc 10y ago

Why is it a win for most ordinary people that GEMA is so handsomely rewarded for limiting content? It is not a good thing at all, it emboldens them. Who does GEMA think that they are? You give Netflix as an example, that isn't going to be resolved any time soon following this deal. GEMA shouldn't exist.

candiodari 10y ago
In theory ? Same reason as copyright. The idea behind GEMA is to create a centralized organization for enforcing copyright. Instead of owing royalties to U2 for playing their songs in a cafe, you'd owe them to GEMA, who'd pay them to U2 according to how often they're played (I believe radio playlists are used as metrics to determine payouts). Secondly, any hard drive or other "blank recording media", such as usb sticks has a 10% surtax most of which goes to GEMA. Funny little details that suck about GEMA: 1) assumption of guilt. You have an event, even some birthday parties, you have to prove, by submitting playlists (paying "handling fees" for the privilege) and they may check, also not free to you. 2) one-sided, no government oversight on what is effectively an extra tax 3) they have pissed off just about everyone, including their beneficiaries 4) they're very heavy-handed In practice ? They're just leeches, they don't pay significant amounts to anyone despite getting quite a bit of money in. Even extremely famous artists that were famous for decades get something like a normal pay from the playing of their songs. Everybody hates them, their "customers" (ie. those who play music) and their beneficiaries. GEMA claims their costs are 15% of what is paid in. In practice it certainly looks to me like it's more like 80%. So it really just creates another abusive government monopoly with cushy jobs for a few government favored people. Additionally it creates a few (tiny) free (for the government) subsidies using a privately-levied tax, given to "cultural" institutions like orchestras and other such things nobody goes to anymore. Not enough to prevent them from dying, so even they are not happy.
- biafra 10y ago
  We need a competitor to get rid of the GEMA assumption.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  As I mentioned in another thread, I feel that they alongside GEZ, just are a kind of government sponsored mafia kind of thing. Specially if I believe the stories how their employees sometimes coerce people to pay.

Noseshine 10y ago

> Before, YT was completely unusable in Germany This is gross exaggeration. I use Youtube extensively and I encountered a blocked video maybe 3% of the time, and only when looking at music videos. Even when that happened I simply enabled the (installed but usually remaining disabled) Proxmate Chrome extension to use a proxy and get the (music) video anyway. The change is welcome but won't have much of an effect on me. People using Youtube extensively for music - and "current" music - are probably most affected. I'd say the majority of music still was accessible. Often you would have another video upload of the same song accessible when one was blocked. Which reminds me of a different issue, is it possible that Youtube, and possibly other video portals too, deliberately ever so slightly messes up the sound of music videos? Maybe to ensure there still is an incentive to buy? I can't really tell for sure, but a lot of music to me sounds a little worse than I would have expected.

darklajid 10y ago
Actually I'm with the GP: A large number of videos I cared about were unwatchable - and the reason was usually low key background music from say an uploaded twitch stream. In other words: I don't (usually, it's quite rare) go to YT for music and still I really believe that this change improves my usage. I don't bother with proxy solutions, so this change is most welcome to me.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  > I don't bother with proxy solutions Note that you didn't really have to do anything but install a Chrome extension. If you left it turned on it would detect when a video was blocked and reload the page through some proxy. Pretty low effort overall. Otherwise I would not have done it myself, the only videos I ever needed it for were pure music videos, which I can easily live without if it's even slightly inconvenient to see them. And remember the comment I replied to said "YT was completely unusable in Germany", which is definitely not true no matter how any one individual person might have been affected. It's one thing to speak about ones own experiences, but YT wasn't "unusable in Germany".
  - 10y ago