User’s stuff

Hello my fellow reader. Yes, you. The only one. Tonight’s fairytale will be about copyright agency in Latvia. They want money from bloggers for embedding YouTube videos. Yes, they do. And sory for clumsy english and lots of typos. No, really. I am.

First thing to know, is that we are not much different from some nordic countries in Europe, since our agency has bosses from there - Nordisk Copyright Bureau. So, the basic rule is - you pay them for every single piece of work you use on your blog, or anywhere else. That would be logical. Copyright is copyright, and author should be paid, if he choses to. Still, there are lot of things wrong with that non-governmental organisation in ways they collect money, acumulate it and pay it. This is not the subject in this story.

February was coming to the logical end, when one of our bloggers received a letter from aforementioned AKKA/LAA. He was asked to sign a contract and pay to AKKA/LAA for publishing copyrighted material in his blog. That shouldn’t surprise.

The surprise came after correspondance with AKKA/LAA, from which he understood that agency wants money for… wait for it… wait… embedded youtube music video’s! Not from YouTube itself. But from bloggers, who embed YouTube videos. Yes, they think, that a blogger is responsible financially for providing embedded material from YouTube.

In an interview their chief of communications departement informed, besides this fact, that YouTube in Latvia is illegal. Yes. My unprofessional translation follows:

We’re in talks with YouTube to come to an agreement, that their operations in Latvia are licensed. There is no licensing agreement yet, so, as I already mentioned, we think that all of YouTube material is illegal in the territory of Latvia. But, we’ve started correspondence, and hope that an agreement will be signed as soon as possible, and YouTube will be available legally to all residents of Latvia.

I’m willing to go and visit their office. No, not to become violent or anything like that. I would like to find out, what are they smoking, and where can I get some.

Officially I think that they’ve lost their minds, never used the internet and have absolutely no understanding about nature of anything remotely close to computers.

P.S. If you are wondering, then pricing is available. AKKA/LAA charges 5.5% of all income from site (!!!) but no less than LVL 10 (~15 EUR or ~20 USD) per month for 1 to 100 works. Each next step (+100 songs) goes for plus 10 Latvian lats.