German YouTubers Protest Against Major Labels
Since rights holders have blocked hundreds of music videos in Germany due to ongoing royalty negotiations with YouTube, a new group called "Bust All Major Labels" has decided to protest.
Many German bloggers and site owners are now adding a few lines of JavaScript code to actively block visitor with IP addresses owned by major labels.
Instead of the message that's displayed when videos are blocked in a location, label employees are given the middle finger, with a warning that reads: "The content of this site isn't available for you. We're not sorry at all about this."
Christoph Maeschig and Mathias Keswan, the two people behind the project, realize that they won't speed up the royalty negotiations by protesting in this manner, but they want label employees experience their YouTube frustrations.
To them, it makes no sense that the record labels have worked out deals in the U.S., yet German users like themselves are left without music video access.
The Bust All Major Labels represents a subtle, yet clever form of cyber protest.
No one gets hurt or cyber-attacked like Anonymous is famous for, but the labels get to feel the annoyances that German users do when they log onto YouTube.
This is not just a label issue. DashGo licenses a ton of music to YouTube globally, and frequently sees it blocked in Germany due to invalid or inaccurate complaints from the publishing rights societies that contest any recorded music whether they represent publishing rights or not.
Thanks Ben – this is exactly right and applies to major labels as well. They all want to be in YouTube in Germany (as they are on in the rest of the world) but the publishing rights societies (eg GEMA) are the cause of this.
Subtle it is, clever it’s not.
This article doesn’t mention it, but Bust All Major Labels in face does block users from GEMA, too. It says so in their website. So I guess it’s both subtle and clever then 🙂