A long standing battle between Google and the German performance rights group GEMA has been causing problems for viewing videos in Germany. The latest instances were videos made in Russia of the recent meteorite showers. They were blocked due to songs playing on the radio of the car from which the video was taken. Google, which owns Youtube, states that they cannot be certain whether or not GEMA has the rights to collect fees from the songs, so they have blocked the videos from view in Germany.
Germany does not have a fair use provision concerning copyright protected material, which would almost certainly allow use of these types of videos in the US. And to make matters worse, Youtube and Google lost a court decision to GEMA last spring, in which the court ordered Youtube to be more proactive and install filters to prevent use of copyright protected material. So it seems Google is simply blocking more and more videos in the country. A study by OpenDataCity shows that 61.5% of the most popular music videos on Youtube are currently blocked in Germany simply because Youtube believes the rights might be held by GEMA.
GEMA is demanding a fee of $0.005 per view of videos using their copyright protected material. Though this doesn't seem a lot, it would add up to many millions of dollars over the course of a year. Google has broken off negotiations with the rights group and the situation is currently at an impasse.
You can read more of the story at Ars Technica.
