GEMA Squeezes YouTube

Any hopes of GEMA reaching an agreement with YouTube appear to have vanished as the German music rights collection agency says it’s taking Google’s video site to court.

The row over how much GEMA wants to charge for renewing its licensing deal with YouTube has rumbled on for months, and the authors’ rights organisation doesn’t seem to have been cowed by its failure to get a preliminary court ruling in its favour at the end of August.

“We want to show Google what we would be capable of doing if we wanted,” said GEMA’s broadcasting and online director Urban Pappi, when in April his organisation demanded YouTube remove 600 videos from its site.

It said it also had the backing of eight foreign collection agencies.

Google said it’s disappointed at how the relationship with GEMA appears to have irreparably broken down but insists the collection society is asking for too much.

“Nobody can expect that YouTube is going into a business where it loses money each time a music video is played,” a company spokesman explained.

“We have always been open to a mutually acceptable deal with GEMA, but its licensing costs remain prohibitive. When we pushed for further discussions, GEMA refused to speak with us and instead took us to court.”

French collection agency SACEM, one of those that backed GEMA’s decision to withdraw videos from YouTube, has reached a deal with the Google side regarding broadcasting videos in France.

YouTube will compensate content creators represented by SACEM, a Paris-based organization that collects royalties on behalf of more than 100,000 members, for works viewed in France through 2012.

It’s the eighth country where YouTube has successfully cut a deal with the major national rights agency.