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Not again. Don’t judge my taste in music.

YouTube is a great place to spend hours and hours listening to music videos. It’s like your own personal MTV (when MTV used to play music). Doing this in Germany, however, is a frustrating experience. Most music videos have been blocked for 3 years, after Germany’s performing rights society (GEMA) and YouTube failed to come to an agreement to licence these videos.

GEMA were originally demanding 12 cents per view in Germany; considering YouTube delivers 4 billion views per day worldwide, much of that including music content, 12 cents per stream would have cost YouTube dear. It was simply too much, even for Google – a free YouTube could not survive on that basis, so nearly all music was blocked.

GEMA’s intransigent stance drew criticism from artists and record companies: the German head of Sony Music comparing Germany’s digital music market to the ‘third-world’, and laying the blame at GEMA’s feet. Despite this, they exerted little political pressure to change the status quo. After all, GEMA (and related organisations) has been a significant source of artist’s revenue for the better part of a century – hitting €736 million in 2010.

So the stalemate goes on. Despite a much lower per-view price from GEMA, there's no sign of an agreement. Just last week, GEMA successfully sued YouTube for letting 12 videos through the block. Trench warfare 2.0. 

I wonder how much of the Pirate Party’s 11% support (as of 12/04/12) can be traced back to this?