Hacker group Anonymous had disabled the GEMA website

The website of GEMA, Germany’s music copyright watchdog, has been hacked amid an ongoing dispute over royalties with the video portal YouTube.

Members of the hacker group Anonymous said on Monday they had disabled the GEMA website in order to send a message to the organization.

GEMA has been locked in a battle with Google for months over royalties for music videos on YouTube, which the US web giant owns. Instead of being able to watch the videos of many popular artists on the site, YouTube users in Germany often see messages saying the videos are blocked.

The hackers ironically played off that by slapping a message on the GEMA website similar to the one now seen on contentious videos on YouTube. Anonymous said the site was “unfortunately no longer available (not only) in Germany” because GEMA was hindering the "right to freedom."

GEMA said it had not yet determined how the hackers had gained access to its website, but the portal Gulli.com reported internet activists had discovered a key security loophole. It is not the first run-in with hackers for GEMA. The group’s website was hit by a denial-of-service attack in June.

GEMA has faced widespread criticism in Germany for its approach towards collecting royalties for musicians. The funds it collects are distributed via a complex formula to 60,000 composers, authors and music publishers who may or may not actually have songs on YouTube.

Its great that german artists have a strong performance rights organization. Unfortunately GEMA favors the larger commercial copyright owners and virtually ignores credit for live performances to independent artists such as Rock & Jazz composers. Perhaps its a good thing that Germany's music mafia gets some blowback, it might teach them to have a little more respect for their performing artists.

I cannot say that his makes me sad, as I have been getting more and more annoyed at friends and family in the UK sending me a link, that then doesn't work... One of the links were of several of my old unit who were having a NAAFI break (Pub crawl) and there was some song on in the background, not to mention the Karaoke clips of my mates murdering one song or another while on the same said pub crawl :-)

I even called them and tried to explain that they were the only people in any country in the world who were doing this, which the woman on the phone denied and said its the same all over the world, so I asked her to name the English equivalent of their organisation which she couldn't, so I asked for the name of any other countries organisation that are controlling the web ensuring that copyrights are not being infringed upon, and she couldn't...

So I said China does and she said oh yes China, my and their work was now putting us on par with a country like that.... She then asked me to send an email with my gripe(s)...

This website is unfortunately not available (not only) in Germany, because it may direct to a company for which Anonymous did not admit the rights of freedom.