Why?
Germany’s music licensing agency (GEMA) has decided to crack down on kindergarten pirate centers and milk some money out of them. Up until this year, German preschools could teach, produce and sing any song they wanted. Not anymore.
“If a preschool wants to make its own copy of certain music – if the words of a song or the musical score is copied – then they need to buy a license,” GEMA spokesperson Peter Hempel told Deutsche Welle.
Copyright fees start at 56 euros ($74) for 500 copies of a song, exception being songs that are part of the public domain (author dead for over 70 years). Those songs are free.
While this seems to be a reasonable move on GEMA’s part (if you’re a lawyer), I believe it adds an unnecessary roadblock for kids interested in music, hampering their creativity. I would have expected something like this to happen in the United States because everyone knows the money-hungry RIAA would sue an unborn fetus for listening to an illegally downloaded song if it could, but Germany? You too, Brutus?
