GEMA Music Collection Society No Longer Will Let Kindergartens Get Away With Teaching Music For Free

We've discussed a few times how the German music collection society GEMA often appears to be one of the worst of the worst when it comes to copyright maximalism. Its latest move is particularly egregious. While it used to allow pre-schools/kindergartens to hand out sheets with music to the children for singing for free, its policy recently changed, so that
the schools now need to pay up (found via Slashdot). In the last few weeks, GEMA started sending out notices to these facilities, warning them to either pay up or no longer hand out sheets with music on it to students. This seems reminiscent of ASCAP demanding that Girl Scouts pay up for singing songs around the campfire. These collection societies have really gotten desperate lately, and now they're trying to shake down kindergarten students for cash. How nice of them.

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Karen Carreno Bijou Phillips Marika Dominczyk Dita Von Teese Rachel Nichols